Citing “two people close to the Kremlin”, the news agency alleged on Thursday that Russian President Vladimir Putin had used an unspecified backchannel to tell Washington that he could be ready for talks on Ukrainian security.

According to the report, the Russian president could drop “an insistence on neutral status for Ukraine and even ultimately abandon opposition to eventual NATO membership”. In exchange, Putin is said to have asked the West to accept Russian sovereignty over all former Ukrainian regions that have joined the country in recent years after voting in public referendums.

Asked to comment on the report, Peskov refuted it as “false and absolutely untrue”. The spokesman earlier also told Bloomberg that while Russia is still open to talks on Ukraine, it is “determined to reach our goals”. While Moscow would prefer to achieve its aims by diplomatic means, it will do so by continuing its military operation against Ukraine if this avenue does not result in any progress, he added.

President Putin stated last month that Moscow is still pursuing the “denazification” and “demilitarization” of Ukraine, as well as an arrangement that would guarantee the neighboring country’s neutral status. He has previously said that Kiev’s push to join NATO – the expansion of which Moscow has described as a critical threat – was one of the key reasons for the current conflict.

At the same time, Ukraine has repeatedly announced it is only prepared to accept the withdrawal of Russian troops from all the territory that Kiev claims as its own. In the autumn of 2022, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky also signed a decree banning all talks with the current leadership in Moscow.

In the US, which is Kiev’s main backer, President Joe Biden has vowed to follow the principle of “nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine”. Russian officials have consistently said all negotiations on the conflict should be conducted with the West, but argue it has shown no appetite for a constructive solution.

Putin said on Friday currently there are a total of 600,000 Russian soldiers in the special operation zone.

“Probably, there are issues that require additional attention, solutions, something always needs to be adjusted, because the combat zone is long, almost 2,000 kilometers [1,200 miles] and there are over 600,000 people in the combat zone,” the president stated during a meeting with students participating in the special military operation.

The IL-76 military transport plane was shot down over Russia’s Belgorod Region on Wednesday morning. Everyone on board – 65 prisoners, six crew members, and three Russian soldiers – died. The Russian Defense Ministry claims that the plane was brought down by Ukrainian anti-aircraft missiles while en route to a prisoner exchange in the city of Belgorod, located near the Russia-Ukraine border.

The GUR was aware that Ukrainian prisoners were traveling on the plane, Putin said on Friday, according to RIA Novosti.

“The entire current Kiev regime is based on crimes committed daily, including against its own citizens,” Putin continued, adding, “The [GUR] knew that we were transporting 65 military personnel there … and knowing this, they struck the plane.”

In a statement issued on Wednesday night, the GUR did not deny that the jet was taken out by Ukrainian forces. Instead, the agency announced that it was unsure whether the prisoners would be taken to the exchange point by air or other means, and that it “was not informed about the need to ensure the safety of the airspace” over the border region.

Putin stressed that material seized from the crash site suggests that an American or French air-defense missile was used to bring down the plane, and that exactly how the aircraft was shot down “will become clear in a couple of days”.

“The results of the investigation into the IL-76 case will be published so that the Ukrainian people know” what happened to their soldiers, he stated.

Russian State Duma Defense Committee chief Andrey Kartapolov has also alleged that Western weapons were used to target the flight, claiming that American Patriot or German Iris-T missiles were fired at the jet.

“All currently available data points to a deliberate, premeditated crime,” Russia’s deputy representative to the UN, Dmitry Polyansky, told a meeting of the UN Security Council on Thursday.

“The Ukrainian leadership was well aware about the route and means by which [the Ukrainian] soldiers would have been transported to the agreed exchange point,” he claimed, alleging that “the regime in Kiev had decided this time to sabotage [the swap] in the most barbaric way”.