The Trump administration’s Army secretary will sit down Tuesday with Russian officials in Abu Dhabi to present a slimmed-down plan to end Moscow’s 33-month-old invasion of Ukraine.
Dan Driscoll arrived in the Middle East after representatives from Washington and Kyiv hammered out a revised framework to end Europe’s deadliest conflict since World War II.
The new plan — said to include about 19 points — no longer includes the requirement that Ukraine give up all of its eastern Donbas region to Russia, one of the most contentious elements of the 28-point framework Driscoll presented to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky last week.
Instead, the issue of territorial claims will be left to President Trump and Zelensky to hammer out at a later date, two people familiar with the discussions told The Post Monday.
The new plan also eliminates a requirement that Ukraine give up any ambition of joining NATO, a concession sought by Russian President Vladimir Putin ahead of his February 2022 invasion.
Following weekend talks between US and Ukrainian officials in Geneva, Switzerland, Zelensky predicted on X that Russia would try to “derail this opportunity for an agreement and to prolong the war.”
“We can see which interests are intertwined, and who is trying to weaken our position — Ukraine’s position — spreading disinformation, intimidating our people,” he said. “We are countering every such attempt to derail the end of the war.”
The White House had previously pushed for Ukraine to sign on to the 28-point peace outline by Thanksgiving — though Trump claimed Saturday it did not constitute a “final offer,” while Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Sunday the framework was “a living, breathing document.”
Multiple US and Ukrainian officials said Monday the initial plan amounted to a Russian “wish list” to end the war that bore little resemblence to the revisions hammered out in Geneva.
“Very few things are left from the original version,” Ukrainian First Deputy Foreign Minister Sergiy Kyslytsya told the Financial Times monday of the new plan. “We developed a solid body of convergence, and a few things we can compromise on.”
