Russian official calls Italian peace plan a ‘fantasy’

Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova  has described a peace plan for Ukraine put forward by Italy as a “fantasy”.

“You can’t supply Ukraine with weapons with one hand and come up with plans for a peaceful resolution of the situation with the other,” Maria Zakharova said at her weekly briefing, referring to the Italian initiative.

“If they hope that the Russian Federation will seize on any Western plan, then they haven’t understood much,” she added.

Italian Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio gave the broad outlines of the plan last week and said that he had discussed it with United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres during a visit to New York. The Kremlin said on Tuesday it had not seen the initiative but hoped to receive it through diplomatic channels.

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 ***  Moscow is aware Italy’s proposed plan on the settlement of the situation in Ukraine, but still has not received the document’s text wording, Russian Presidential Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Wednesday.

"We have certainly had a glimpse, read and heard about this plan’s parameters, which were circulated by mass media, but we have not received as of yet the official wording [of this document]," Peskov told journalists.