According to the Kommersant daily, President Vladimir Putin informed several of Russia's leading businessmen that he could be amenable to "swapping some territory controlled by Russian forces in Ukraine, but that he wanted the whole of Donbas."
Putin briefed prominent businesses on the specifics of the proposal at a late-night Kremlin meeting on December 24, according to Andrei Kolesnikov, the Kremlin correspondent for the Kommersant, one of Russia's leading newspapers.
"The Russian side is still prepared to make the concessions he made in Anchorage, according to Vladimir Putin. Put otherwise, that "Donbas is ours," Kommersant stated.
Putin essentially wants the entire Donbas region, but outside of that, "a partial exchange of territories from the Russian side is not ruled out," according to Kolesnikov's newspaper article.
Zelenskiy, however, said that neither Ukraine nor the US could agree on demands that Ukraine give up the areas of Donbas that it still controls or on the future of the Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhia nuclear power facility.
In addition to his envoy Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner negotiating with Russia, Ukraine, and European countries, U.S. President Donald Trump has frequently pledged to put an end to the bloodiest conflict in Europe since World War Two.
Although Russian officials have frequently mentioned vague "understandings" struck between Putin and Trump at a summit in Anchorage, Alaska, in August, the specifics of the U.S. plans have not been made public.
According to Russian estimations, Russia owns all of Crimea, which it seized in 2014, over 90% of Donbas, 75% of the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions, and small portions of the Kharkiv, Sumy, Mykolaiv, and Dnipropetrovsk areas.
On December 19, Putin stated that he believed a peace agreement should be founded on the principles of the prerequisites he outlined in 2024: Kyiv formally relinquishing its desire to join NATO and Ukraine withdrawing from all of the Donbas, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson provinces.
Kommersant claims that during his discussion with businesses, Putin also brought up the subject of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station, which is the biggest nuclear facility in Europe.
According to Kommersant, Putin stated that discussions over combined Russian-American management of the nuclear power plant were underway.
According to Kommersant, Putin also stated that the plant should be utilized to partially feed Ukraine and that the US has shown interest in cryptocurrency mining close to the facility. In February 2022, Russia launched an invasion of Ukraine, which the Kremlin refers to as a "special military operation."
