MOSCOW, October 20. /TASS/. President Vladimir Putin’s Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov has dismissed has article in the U.S.-based POLITICO magazine on an alleged proposal by Putin to divide Ukraine as ‘red herring’.

“In the first place, we don’t know the oeuvre of that publication well enough but on the whole this information looks like sheer red herring,” he told Gazeta.ru news portal.

Somewhat earlier, Poland’s former foreign minister Radoslaw Sikorski told POLITICO that Putin ostensibly make hints to Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk in 2008 at a possibility of dividing Ukraine.