Trump team dismisses Republican strategist's Ukraine peace plan claim

US President-elect Donald Trump's team has distanced itself from remarks made by a Republican strategist that the White House's proposal to end the war in Ukraine was about peace and not territory.

In an interview with the BBC, Bryan Lanza, who worked on Trump's presidential campaign, outlined some of the incoming Trump administration's alleged points for peace and suggested restoring lost territory wasn't a priority.

"If President Zelenskyy comes to the table and says, well we can only have peace if we have Crimea, he shows to us that he's not serious. Crimea is gone," Lanza said.

But a spokesperson for Trump's transition team said Lanza did not currently work for the president-elect and did not speak for him.

On the campaign trail, Trump claimed he could end the war in Ukraine "within a day" without going into detail about how that would be achieved.

But Trump also hasn't rule out the possibility that Kyiv may have to cede territory to Moscow to bring about an end to more than two years of war.

Russia annexed the Crimean Peninsula in 2014 and then, in the first year of the war, unilaterally declared the annexation of four areas of Ukraine - Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia - without ever maintaining full control over any of them. 

But Ukraine's president Volodymyr Zelenskyy has repeatedly said the full withdrawal of Russia's forces and the return of all annexed territories is a must if peace is to be established.

Meanwhile, Russia has said it is open to hearing Trump's proposals on how to end the war.

Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said Moscow and Washington were "exchanging signals" on Ukraine via "closed channels."

He did not specify whether the communication was with the current administration or Trump and