UPDATE: Spox: Kremlin unaware of plan to lift sanctions, Crimea lease

(Adds comments in last two paragraphs)

MOSCOW, Feb 20 (PRIME) -- The Kremlin knows nothing about a plan to lift anti-Russia sanctions envisaging a referendum in Ukraine on leasing Crimea to Moscow for 50–100 years and withdrawing of Russian troops from the east of Ukraine, presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov told PRIME on Monday.

The plan is absurd and it has not been agreed upon with Moscow, Viktor Ozerov, chairman of the defense and security committee at the Federation Council, the parliament’s upper house, said. “These proposals are absurd and unacceptable to Russia, they have not been agreed upon with Russia,” Ozerov said.

The New York Times reported on February 19 that Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada Deputy Andrei Artemenko had sent a proposal to ease the tensions with Russia to Michael Flynn, former national security adviser to the U.S. President Donald Trump. Flynn later resigned on accusations of connections with the Russian ambassador but the plan remains in the Trump’s administration.

Leonid Slutsky, head of the foreign relations committee at the State Duma, the parliament’s lower house, called the plan a dead end. “The plan by Ukrainian Deputy Andrei Artemenko, if it was indeed submitted or discussed, or being discussed in the U.S. administration is in fact a dead end.”

“Since Crimea is an integral part of our country at large, any attempts to cast doubt on this fact are the infringement of the Russian Federation’s territorial integrity,” Slutsky said. He added that Russian troops are not participating in the Ukrainian military conflict, are not a side of the conflict.

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