Vladimir Putin is open to discussing a Ukraine ceasefire deal with Donald Trump but rules out making any major territorial concessions and insists Kyiv abandon ambitions to join NATO, the Reuters news agency reports, citing five sources.

“In the first detailed reporting of what President Putin would accept in any deal brokered by Trump, the five current and former Russian officials said the Kremlin could broadly agree to freeze the conflict along the front lines. There may be room for negotiation over the precise carve-up of the four eastern regions of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhia and Kherson, according to three of the people who all requested anonymity to discuss sensitive matters,” the message reads.

While Moscow claims the four regions as wholly part of Russia, defended by the country's nuclear umbrella, its forces on the ground control 70-80% of the territory with about 26,000 square km still held by Ukrainian troops.

Russia may also be open to withdrawing from the relatively small patches of territory it holds in the Kharkiv and Mykolaiv regions, in the north and south of Ukraine, two of the officials said.

At the same time, Putin said this month that any ceasefire deal should reflect the "realities" on the ground but that he feared a short-lived truce which would only allow the West to rearm Ukraine.

"If there is no neutrality, it is difficult to imagine the existence of any good-neighbourly relations between Russia and Ukraine," Putin told the Valdai discussion group on November 7. Why? Because this would mean that Ukraine will be constantly used as a tool in the wrong hands and to the detriment of the interests of the Russian Federation," Putin said at the Valdai discussion group on November 7.

Two of the sources said outgoing U.S. President Joe Biden's decision to allow Ukraine to fire American ATACMS missiles deep into Russia could complicate and delay any settlement - and stiffen Moscow's demands as hardliners push for a bigger chunk of Ukraine.

On Tuesday, Kyiv used the missiles to strike Russian territory for the first time, according to Moscow which decried the move as a major escalation.

According to two of the sources, if no ceasefire is agreed, the two sources said, then Russia will fight on.

"Putin has already said that freezing the conflict will not work in any way. And the missile authorisation is a very dangerous escalation on the part of the United States," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Reuters hours before the Russians reported the ATACMS strikes.

While Russia will not tolerate Ukraine joining NATO, or the presence of NATO troops on Ukrainian soil, it is open to discussing security guarantees for Kyiv, according to the five current and former officials.

According to sources, the Kremlin could push for include Kyiv agreeing to limit the size of its armed forces and committing not to restrict the use of the Russian language.

Domestically, Putin could sell a ceasefire deal that saw Russia hold onto most of the territory of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhia and Kherson as a victory that ensured the defence of Russian speakers in eastern Ukraine and safeguarded the landbridge to Crimea, according to one of the sources.

The future of Crimea itself is not up for discussion, all the Russian officials said.

One of the officials, a senior source with knowledge of top-level Kremlin discussions, said the West would have to accept the "harsh truth" that all the support it had given Ukraine could not prevent Russia from winning the war.

When asked what a possible ceasefire might look like, two of the Russian sources referred to a draft agreement that was almost approved in April 2022 after talks in Istanbul, and which Putin has referred to in public as a possible basis for a deal.

Under that draft, opens new tab, a copy of which Reuters has seen, Ukraine should agree to permanent neutrality in return for international security guarantees from the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council: Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States.

One of the Russian officials said there would be no agreement unless Ukraine received security guarantees, adding: "The question is how to avoid a deal that locks the West into a possible direct confrontation with Russia one day."