At the start of the war, Putin rejected a peace deal recommended by his adviser.

The chief envoy of Vladimir Putin for Ukraine told the Russian leader in start of the war that he had closed a provisional agreement with Kiev that would satisfy Russia’s demand that the Ukraine outside the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), but Putin rejected it and went ahead with his military campaign, according to three people close to the Russian leadership.

Ukrainian envoy Dmitry Kozak told Putin he believed the deal he had struck eliminated the need for Russia to pursue a full-scale occupation of Ukraine, according to these sources. Kozak’s recommendation to Putin to adopt the deal is being reported by Reuters for the first time.

Putin had repeatedly claimed before the war that NATO and its military infrastructure were closing in on Russia’s borders by accepting new members from Eastern Europe, and that the alliance was now preparing to bring Ukraine into its orbit as well. Putin publicly said that this posed an existential threat to Russia, forcing him to react.

But despite having previously supported the talks, Putin made it clear when presented with the Kozak deal that the concessions negotiated by his adviser did not go far enough and that he had expanded his goals to include the annexation of swathes of Ukrainian territory, the sources said. . Result: The deal was cancelled.

Asked about the Reuters findings, the spokesman for the Kremlin , Dmitry Peskov, said: “This has absolutely nothing to do with reality. This never happened. It is absolutely incorrect information.”

Kozak did not respond to requests for comment sent via the Kremlin.

Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to the Ukrainian president, said Russia used the talks as a smokescreen to prepare for its invasion, but did not respond to questions about the content 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 agreement,” Podolyak said.

Two of the three sources said an effort to finalize the deal took place immediately after the February 24 invasion of Russia. Within days, Kozak believed he had Ukraine’s deal on the main terms Russia had been seeking and recommended that Putin sign a deal, the sources said.

“After February 24th, Kozak was given carte blanche: they gave him the green light; he got the deal. He brought him back and told him to go away. Everything was cancelled. Putin simply 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 the discussions between Kozak and Putin – differed on the timing, saying that Kozak had proposed the deal to Putin, and rejected it, shortly before the invasion. All sources requested anonymity to share confidential internal information.

Moscow’s offensive in Ukraine is the biggest military campaign in Europe since World War II. This prompted sweeping economic sanctions against Russia and military support for Ukraine from Washington and its Western allies.

Even if Putin had agreed to Kozak’s plan, it remains uncertain whether the war would have ended. Reuters was unable to independently verify whether Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky or his government officials were committed to the deal.

Kozak, 63, has been a loyal lieutenant to Putin since he worked with him in the 1990s in the St. Petersburg mayor’s office.

Kozak was well placed to negotiate a peace deal because, since 2020, Putin has tasked him with conducting talks with fellow Ukrainians about the Donbass region of eastern Ukraine, controlled by Russian-backed separatists after a 2014 uprising. The Russian delegation in talks with Ukrainian officials in Berlin on February 10 – brokered by France and Germany – Kozak said in a late press conference that the latest round of these negotiations ended without a breakthrough.

Kozak was also one of those present when, three days before the invasion, Putin gathered his military and security chiefs and top advisers in the Kremlin’s Yekaterinsky hall for a meeting of the Russian Security Council.

State television cameras recorded part of the meeting, where Putin presented plans to give formal recognition to separatist entities in eastern Ukraine.

Once the cameras were taken out of the vast room with its neoclassical columns and vaulted ceiling, Kozak spoke out against Russia taking any steps to escalate the situation with Ukraine, said two of the three people close to the Russian leadership, as well as a third person who knew what happened to the people who attended the meeting.

Another Reuters interviewee, who helped with the post-invasion talks, said the discussions broke down in early March when Ukrainian officials understood Putin was committed to carrying out the full-scale invasion.

Six months after the start of the war, Kozak remains the deputy chief of staff of the Kremlin. But he is no longer dealing with the Ukraine dossier, according to six of the sources who spoke to Reuters.

“From what I can see, Kozak is nowhere to be seen,” said one of the six, a source close to the separatist leadership in eastern Ukraine.

(Edited by Daniel Flynn)