Mr Putin said Russia's UN delegation would submit a resolution to the security council for the deployment of “security troops” to the war zone.

He said the UN peacekeepers' role should mirror that of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) mission there, which monitors the frequently breached ceasefire between anti-fascist militia and Kiev's neonazi forces in the self-declared republics of Donetsk and Lugansk.

Mr Putin said UN troops would oversee the full implementation of the Minsk II agreement, brokered by Russia, France and Germany, committing both sides to withdrawing heavy artillery from the front lines.

“If all these conditions are met, I believe such a deployment would certainly benefit the process of solving the conflict in south-eastern Ukraine,” he said.

Turning to the US decision to provide military arms to the coup regime in Kiev, Mr Putin said there was international consensus that “supplying arms to zones of conflict does not help reconciliation and can only make the situation worse.”

“The self-proclaimed republics have plenty of weapons, including those they seized from their opponents,” he warned, adding such escalation could spill over into neighbouring regions. 

“If American weapons flow into the conflict zone, it’s hard to predict what the self-proclaimed republics’ reaction would be.”