US and Ukrainian officials have rejected suggestions that de facto Moscow-controlled eastern Ukraine could hold a referendum on its status, after Russian president Vladimir Putin reportedly suggested the idea to US counterpart Donald Trump.
He made the proposal to Mr Trump in Helsinki on Monday, when they spoke for two hours with only interpreters present, according to reports quoting sources at a subsequent meeting between Mr Putin and Russian diplomats.
The sources said Mr Putin agreed not to publicise the plan so that Mr Trump could consider it, and the White House has revealed few details about what the two leaders discussed during negotiations that unnerved US allies and many Americans.
Anatoly Antonov, the Russian ambassador to Washington, said on Friday that the presidents had talked about Ukraine and that "concrete proposals were made on how to resolve this question" – but he declined to give further information.
Later, Garrett Marquis, a spokesman for the White House national security council, said: "The [US] administration is not considering supporting a referendum in the eastern Ukraine . . . To organise a so-called referendum in a part of Ukraine which is not under government control would have no legitimacy."
Kiev also dismissed the idea, saying Ukraine would never let Mr Putin stage a repeat of his 2014 annexation of Crimea and rejecting any referendum on the status of the war-ravaged Donbas region while it is run by Russian-led separatists.
Donetsk and Luhansk
"There will be no referendums under the barrels of guns and with Russian tanks deployed next to schools and nurseries in occupied Donetsk and Luhansk," said Iryna Herashchenko, deputy speaker of the Ukrainian parliament.
“There will be no referendums organised in areas where, for four years, citizens have been brainwashed by Russian propaganda . . . no referendums organised by Kremlin puppets on land occupied by the Kremlin,” she added.
“We firmly adhere to the position that the Russian Federation must comply with the Minsk agreements: stop shooting, stop its supply of equipment to militants, withdraw its troops . . . and its weapons, release hostages and give us back control over our border.”
Despite a peace deal agreed in Minsk in 2015, shelling and skirmishes continue in the Donbas region, where four years of fighting have killed more than 10,300 people and displaced 1.6 million.
After Ukraine’s pro-western revolution in February 2014, Moscow’s military seized control of Crimea and oversaw an illegal referendum on its status, and then Russian fighters, weapons and propaganda fomented the conflict in Donbas.
Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova declined to reveal whether Mr Putin proposed a Donbas referendum to Mr Trump, but said: "If the international community, that is the US above all, cannot make Kiev fulfil the Minsk agreements, then other options for regulating the . . . crisis should be discussed."
The Interfax news agency quoted an “informed Russian source” as saying Mr Putin was not proposing a repeat of the “Crimean scenario” but a referendum on the status of Donbas within Ukraine; Kiev says Moscow backs federalisation for Ukraine so as to use its influence in eastern regions to destabilise the entire country.
