THE proposals put forward by the United States to end the war between Russia and Ukraine offer a starting point for talks, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday.

“We need to sit down and discuss this seriously,” Mr Putin told reporters at the end of a three-day visit to Kyrgyzstan. “Every word matters.”

He described US President Donald Trump’s plan as “a set of issues put forward for discussion” rather than a draft agreement.

“If Ukrainian troops withdraw from the territories they occupy, hostilities will cease. If they don’t withdraw, we will achieve this by force,” the Russian leader said.

Moscow has had little to say in public about the plan put forward by the Trump administration. Russia says they only obtained the original 28-point plan through informal channels.

It is not immediately clear whether Mr Putin is commenting on the original Trump plan or a revised plan hastily cobbled together by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and his country’s European allies on Sunday.

But earlier this week, the Russians hit out at what they described as “this kind of megaphone diplomacy.”

He said: “Serious diplomats discuss such things privately, the way they are supposed to, until a final agreement is reached.”

In the latest example of tension between Moscow and European countries, Russia’s Foreign Ministry said on Thursday that it had ordered the closure of Poland’s Consulate General in the eastern city of Irkutsk.

The tit-for-tat move follows the closure of Russia’s consulate general in the Polish city of Gdansk in November. In a statement, the Russian Foreign Ministry said that Moscow would not “allow such actions to go unanswered.”

Poland announced the closure of the Gdansk consulate after a railway line close to Warsaw was sabotaged in mid-November.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk later said that two Ukrainian citizens working for Russia were suspected of carrying out the attack.

Meanwhile in Ukraine, Mr Zelensky’s government is mired in a major corruption scandal.

Anti-corruption units raided the home and office of the Ukrainian president’s chief of staff, Andrii Yermak.

Two national agencies fighting entrenched corruption in Ukraine said they searched Mr Yermak’s office.

Mr Yermak said: “The investigators are facing no obstacles,” saying that he was co-operating fully with them and his lawyers were present.

The National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine and the Specialised Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office are Ukrainian anti-corruption watchdogs.

They are behind a major investigation into a $100 million (£76m) energy sector corruption scandal involving top Ukrainian officials.