Under this scenario, Russia would have military and economic control over the occupied parts of Ukraine through its own governing body, imitating Israel's de facto rule over Palestinian territories seized from Jordan in 1967, the newspaper said.

As a source close to US National Security Council said, the idea was raised a few weeks ago during a conversation between US President Donald Trump's envoy Steve Witkoff and his Russian interlocutors in Moscow.

Witkoff, who was also tasked by Trump to mediate in achieving peace in the Middle East, reportedly supports this idea, which the Americans believe bypasses obstacles in the Ukrainian Constitution that prohibit the ceding of territory without holding a"all-Ukrainian" referendum.

The President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky has refused to consider surrendering the territory, but the occupation model could be a mechanism for achieving a truce after three and a half years of war, according to"The Times".

According to this model, the borders of Ukraine would not change, just as the borders of the West Bank have not changed for 58 years, even though it is under Israeli control.

"It will be the same as Israel occupying the West Bank. With a governor, with the economy going to Russia, not Ukraine. But formally it will still be Ukraine, because Ukraine will never give up its sovereignty. But the reality is that it will be an occupied territory, and the model is Palestine," said a source ahead of Trump's summit with Putin on Friday in Alaska.

For some American negotiators, this outcome for the occupied territories of Ukraine would only reflect the reality of the war and the refusal of all other countries to directly engage in the fight against Russia, the newspaper said.

In this view, all that remains is to determine the exact borders of the Russian occupation, which Putin is trying to expand as much as possible before the negotiations with Trump in Alaska.

This scenario fits the position expressed in May by Sebastian Gorka, Trump's senior director for the fight against terrorism, the"Times" reports.

"We live in the real world. The Trump administration lives in the real world. We acknowledge the reality on the ground. That is the first step, because we are not utopians or social engineers. We do not believe in some clouds of utopia," Gorka told Politico.

As he pointed out, the administration recognizes the reality on the ground and has one priority above all others, whether it is the Middle East or Ukraine, and that is to stop the bloodshed, while everything else comes after.