The price would include the US making concessions to Moscow such as recognising the 2014 annexation of Crimea, though Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyysaid no such proposal had been shared with him by the White House and that his country could not endorse it.

The emerging US-Russia plan would then envisage a ceasefire along roughly the existing front lines once Moscow’s territorial demand has been dropped, leaks suggest – something that Ukraine has indicated it could accept, as long it did not have to recognise Russian occupation as permanent or legal.