NEW YORK, Feb. 19 – A controversial peace plan, said to be approved by President Putin, was recently submitted to the Trump administration and suggests Ukraine should lease Crimea to Russia for 50 or 100 years.

The plan, which was never discussed with Ukrainian officials, was submitted by a wealthy Ukrainian lawmaker to Michael Flynn, Trump’s national security adviser, days before his resignation last week.

The lawmaker, Andriy Artemenko, told The New York Times he also planned to share with the U.S. government new explosive documents implicating President Petro Poroshenko in corruption.

The resignation of Flynn on February 13 stalled the plan, but Artemenko hopes that Flynn’s replacement will deliver the message to President Trump.

“A lot of people will call me a Russian agent, a U.S. agent, a C.I.A. agent,” Artemenko said. “But how can you find a good solution between our countries if we do not talk?”

Russia, which annexed Crimea in March 2014, is stoking separatist rebellion in eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk via supply of arms and fighters. But Russia is also suffering from economic and financial sanctions imposed by the U.S. and by the European Union.

A peace plan agreed by Russia and by the U.S. could potentially open way for lifting the sanctions, easing Russia’s economic pain.

Steven Pifer, a former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, tweeted on Sunday: “Arrangement described in this story should make alarm bells ring in the White House.”

Trump, who usually avoided making strong anti-Russia statements, on February 14 demanded that Russia must return control over Crimea to Ukraine, White House spokesman Sean Spicer said.

Moscow responded that it plans to keep Crimea.

The remark was made less than 24 hours after Flynn’s resignation following news reports he without a proper authorization had discussed sanctions with the Russian government.

This is a second controversial peace plan that was disclosed over the past three months. Viktor Pinchuk, a Ukrainian billionaire who lives in London and has Russian business interests, in an article published by The Wall Street Journal in December, suggested Ukraine must stop pressing the issue on Crimea for decades.

The attempts by Artemenko to reach out to the Trump administration with the controversial plan infuriated Ukrainian officials.

Ukraine’s ambassador to the United States, Valeriy Chaly, said Artemenko “is not entitled to present any alternative peace plans on behalf of Ukraine to any foreign government, including the U.S. administration.”

Along with Artemenko, the latest peace plan has been promoted and pushed for by Michael Cohen, the president’s personal lawyer, who delivered the document, and Felix Sater, a business associate who helped Trump scout deals in Russia, The New York Times reported.

“Sater is convicted felon, stock scammer and Russian mafia associate,” John Schindler, a former NSA analyst, national security columnist for The Observer. “Sater’s dad is a top underboss for Semyon Mogilevich, the world’s leading mafia don.” (nr/nyt/ez)