Representatives of the White House denied earlier media reports that CIA Director William Burns, on behalf of U.S. President Joe Biden, offered Russia to retain control over a fifth of the territory of Ukraine in exchange for the cessation of hostilities.

Sean Davitt, the deputy spokesperson at the White House's National Security Council, told that a report from the Swiss-German newspaper Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ) is "not accurate," and that the CIA would say the same, Newsweek said.

A CIA official told Newsweek that claims in the NZZ report that Burns took a secret trip to Moscow in January and that there was a peace proposal put forward by the director on behalf of the White House were "completely false."

Earlier, the Swiss newspaper Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ) reported, citing senior German foreign politicians, that in mid-January, Burns presented Kyiv and Moscow with a peace plan that would end the war that began when Putin invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022. According to the newspaper, the proposal said "about 20% of the territory of Ukraine" — which is approximately equal to the area of Donbas.

It was reported that both Ukraine and Russia rejected this proposal. Ukraine rejected the offer "because they don't want their territory to be divided," while Russian officials said they would "win the war in the long run anyway," NZZ reports.