Donald Trump. Mario Tama/Getty Images

President Donald Trump's personal counsel, Michael Cohen, hand-delivered a "peace" plan for Russia and Ukraine to former national security adviser Michael Flynn before Flynn was asked to resign, the New York Times reported on Sunday.

The plan involved lifting sanctions on Russia in return for Moscow withdrawing its support for pro-Russia separatists in eastern Ukraine. It would also allow Russia to maintain control over Crimea, which it annexed in 2014.

Trump has suggested he would be open to lifting sanctions on Russia if Moscow proved a useful ally in fighting terrorism.

The Times said the plan was pushed by Cohen — a close confidante of Trump who served as his organization's special counsel from 2007 to 2017 and now serves as Trump's personal lawyer — and Felix Sater, a Russian-American real-estate developer who has helped the Trump Organization scout deals in Russia.

Ukrainian lawmaker Andrii V. Artemenko, who met with Trump's campaign team during the election, was also involved in drafting the proposal. Artemenko told the Times he had evidence of Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko's corruption that could lead to his ouster.

Poroshenko has been locked in a war with pro-Russia separatists in eastern Ukraine since he took power in 2014. He is considered more friendly to the West than his ousted predecessor, Viktor Yanukovych. Yanukovych's political rise was heavily aided by former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, who worked as an adviser on Yanukovych's presidential campaign.

The Trump Organization's special counsel, Michael Cohen Stephanie Keith/Reuters

Cohen, Sater, and Artemenko met in a hotel lobby on Park Avenue in Manhattan in late January to draw up the proposal, the Times reported. Cohen told the paper that the meeting was aimed at "bringing about peace" between Ukraine and Russia. Violence flared up again in eastern Ukraine last month between the Ukrainian army and pro-Russia separatists, in what amounted to the worst fighting in nearly a year.

In a series of text messages to Business Insider on Monday, Cohen said he "never delivered any documents to Flynn or any member of the White House nor engaged the President regarding this matter." He gave a similar statement to the Washington Post on Sunday.

Cohen told Business Insider that he "emphatically" denies drafting the plan "or even knowing what the plan is." He acknowledged that he met with Artemenko for "under 10 minutes" to discuss a plan Artemenko said "was acknowledged by Russian authorities that would create world peace.

"My response was, 'Who doesn't want world peace?'" he said.

The Times stood by its story, however, telling The Washington Post that Cohen "told The Times in no uncertain terms that he delivered the Ukraine proposal to Michael Flynn’s office at the White House. Mr. Sater told the Times that Mr. Cohen had told him the same thing."

Sater, a businessman who has boasted of his "relationship with Trump," told the Post last May that he "handled all of the negotiations" for the Trump Organization's dealings in Russia in the mid-2000s.

Trump has distanced himself from Sater, insisting in sworn testimony as part of a 2013 lawsuit that "if [Sater] were sitting in the room right now, I really wouldn’t know what he looked like."

Cohen as a 'liaison'

Cohen, Trump's lawyer, was named in the explosive, unsubstantiated dossier presented by top US intelligence officials to Trump and senior lawmakers last month that has increased scrutiny of his presidential campaign's ties to Russia.

The memos, compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele for an opposition research firm in Washington, DC, said that Cohen was part of the "ongoing secret liaison relationship between the New York tycoon’s campaign and the Russian leadership,” and that he met secretly with Kremlin officials in Prague in August 2016.

Cohen, whose wife is Ukrainian, insisted shortly after the dossier was published that he was in California at the time of the alleged meeting and that he had never been to Prague.

The FBI is currently reviewing the allegations made in the dossier and is pursuing three separate investigations into Russian hacking that targeted prominent Democrats during the US election. The intelligence community is also examining phone calls made between Trump associates and Russian officials throughout the campaign.

This article has been updated to include further comments from Michael Cohen.