Vladimir Putin is ready to share sovereignty of Crimea with Ukraine, according to an astonishing 'new peace plan'.
The dictator sent his trusted interior minister Vladimir Kolokoltsev to the US with new proposals to end the war that the dictator started, say sources in both Moscow and Kyiv.
Despite being sanctioned, Kolokoltsev was allowed into the US ostensibly to attend a UN meeting of police chiefs.
But this was a ruse allowing him to travel to Washington on a VIP plane from Putin's presidential fleet to transmit to the US government the dictator's real demands for a peace deal, it is claimed.
Leading Ukrainian TV journalist Dmitry Gordon said he had received details of the package from 'our intelligence sources', while Russian Telegram channel Gosdumskaya - which claims insider sources in Moscow - separately reported a similar set of Putin demands.
The package is likely to be unacceptable to Ukraine, which would have to cede huge swathes of invaded territory, and be barred from joining NATO, but it is concessionary compared with Putin's demands in May.
It would see the Kremlin dictator gain spoils from going to war.
'The main purpose of his [Kolokoltsev's] arrival was to hand over Russia's peace plan to the US authorities,' said Gordon, who said it was a Putin plan 'to end the war'.
The demands were that Ukraine must completely withdraw from Donetsk and Luhansk regions, both of which are now partially annexed by Russia.
But Russia would hand over Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Station and the nearby town of Enerhodar to Ukraine.
And he would discuss the possible transfer of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions to the control of Ukraine.
Crimea would become a 'specially demilitarised administrative territory with dual subordination to Ukraine and the Russian Federation'.
'Ukraine must take on itself legally binding international guarantees, not to block the supply of water to Crimea,' said Gordon, reading from a document.
Putin seized the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea in 2014 and vowed he would never return it to Ukraine.
Ukraine would also control a 62-mile 'demilitarised zone' along the Dnipro River.
The Ukrainian army would have a legal maximum size, and the country would be barred from joining NATO, a key Zelinsky goal.
But Putin would not seek to block Ukraine joining the EU.
The West would drop sanctions on Russian oil and gas, as well as banking.
Gordon gave the army size as 350,000, but the Gosdumskaya Telegram channel said 150,000.
The UN meeting that the Russian minister attended was a 'diversionary manoeuvre', said Gordon.
'The Donetsk and Luhansk regions cannot be transferred under the control of Ukraine, because this will cause, they say, the imminent genocide of the population of the territory, a third of which took part in hostilities against Ukraine,' said Gordon.
There has been no official comment from the US, Russia or Ukraine over the alleged back channel contacts concerning Kolokoltsev's visit.
Intriguingly, Kolokoltsev's plane was seen alongside former US president Donald Trump's aircraft as it arrived in Washington.
Trump has vowed that he could rapidly halt the debilitating war if re-elected and hinted that this would involve Ukraine ceding territory in exchange for security assurances short of being a NATO member.
Kolokoltsev, 63, has been Putin's Interior Minister for 12 years, in charge of Russian police.