Asked to comment on the information, Peskov said: “This has absolutely nothing to do with reality. There was nothing like it. It’s completely wrong information.”
The Russian president’s chief envoy to Ukraine said that, once the war began, he had offered the Russian leader a preliminary deal with Kyiv that would have satisfied Russia’s demand that Ukraine stay out of NATO, but Putin rejected it and moved on. his military operation, Reuters reported, citing three people close to the Russian leadership.
According to Reuters interlocutors, Putin’s envoy, Dmitry Kozakwho was born in Ukraine, told Putin that in his view the deal he had brokered eliminated the need for Russia to pursue a large-scale occupation of Ukraine and recommended that the president adopt the deal.
Kozak’s recommendation to Putin to adopt the deal was first reported by Reuters.
Russian President Dmitry Peskov’s spokesman, asked to comment on this information, said: “This has absolutely nothing to do with reality. There was nothing like it. It’s completely wrong information.”
Kozak did not respond to requests for comment on the matter, which were sent to him through the Kremlin.
An adviser to the Ukrainian president Mykhailo Podoliak said Russia used the talks as a smoke screen to prepare its invasion, but did not answer questions about the substance of the talks or confirm that a preliminary agreement had been reached. “Today, we clearly understand that the Russian side was never interested in a peaceful settlement,” Podoliak said.
Two of the three sources said the effort to reach an agreement ended soon after the February 24 invasion. Within days, Kozak believed he had succeeded in getting Ukraine to agree to Russia’s main terms and recommended that Putin sign a deal, the sources said.
“After February 24, Kozak was acting in the dark: they gave him the green light, he had made the deal. He brought her back and was told to leave. Everything was cancelled. Putin just changed the plan as he went along,” said one of the sources close to the Russian leadership.
The third source – who was briefed on the events by people briefed on discussions between Kozak and Putin – differed on the timing (of the deal), saying that Kozak had proposed the deal to Putin, which he rejected, shortly before the invasion. All the sources asked to remain anonymous to share sensitive inside information.
Kozak, 63, has been a staunch Putin deputy since working with him in the 1990s in the St. Petersburg mayor’s office.
Kozak was able to negotiate a peace deal because, starting in 2020, Putin had tasked him with holding talks with his Ukrainian counterparts over eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region, which is controlled by Russian-backed separatists after a 2014 uprising. .After leading the Russian delegation in talks with Ukrainian officials in Berlin on February 10 – brokered by France and Germany – Kozak told a press conference that the latest round of those negotiations had ended without a significant result.
Kozak was also among those present at a meeting of Russia’s Security Council, held in the Kremlin’s Yekaterinsky Hall three days before the invasion, at which Putin gathered the military and security chiefs and his top advisers.
State television recorded part of that meeting, in which Putin presented his plans for formal recognition of separatist entities in eastern Ukraine.
Once the cameras turned away from the vast hall with its neoclassical columns and vaulted ceiling, Kozak railed against any steps by Russia to escalate the situation with Ukraine, two of the three people close to the Russian leadership said, as and a third person who learned about what happened from people who attended the meeting.
Another person who spoke to Reuters and who was present at the post-invasion talks said talks broke down in early March when Ukrainian officials realized Putin was determined to go ahead with a full-scale invasion.
Six months after the start of the war, Kozak remains in his post as deputy head of the presidential administration. But he is no longer handling the Ukraine file, according to six of the sources who spoke to Reuters.
“What I can say is that Kozak is nowhere to be seen,” said one of the six, a source close to the separatist leadership in eastern Ukraine.
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