The Trump administration’s Army secretary sat 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.
“Late Monday and throughout Tuesday, Secretary Driscoll and team have been in discussions with the Russian delegation to achieve a lasting peace in Ukraine,” US Army spokesman Lt. Col. Jeffrey Tolbert said in a statement. “The talks are going well and we remain optimistic. Secretary Driscoll is closely synchronized with the White House and the U.S. interagency as these talks progress.”
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.”
Overnight Monday, Russia launched a wave of attacks on Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv with at least seven people killed in strikes that hit city buildings and energy infrastructure.
Russia fired 22 missiles of various types and over 460 drones at Ukraine overnight, Zelensky wrote on Telegram. The strikes knocked out water, electricity and heat in parts of Kyiv. Video footage posted to Telegram showed a large fire spreading in a nine-story residential building in Kyiv’s eastern Dniprovskyi district.
Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said 20 people were injured. The Russian Defense Ministry said it targeted military-industrial facilities and energy assets. The strikes were a response to Ukrainian attacks on civilian objects in Russia, it added.
In a subsequent attack wave, four people were killed and three were injured in a strike on a nonresidential building in Kyiv’s western Sviatoshynyi district, according to the head of Kyiv city administration, Tymur Tkachenko.
Neighboring Romania and Moldova reported that a handful of drones violated their airspace, with one each landing on the two countries’ soil.
Ukraine’s emergency services said six people, including two children, were also injured in a Russian attack on energy and port infrastructure in the Odesa region.
Meanwhile, a Ukrainian drone attack on Russia’s southern Rostov region overnight killed three people and injured eight others in the city of Taganrog not far from the border in Ukraine, Rostov Gov. Yuri Slyusar said in an online statement.
Russian air defenses destroyed 249 Ukrainian drones overnight above various Russian regions and the occupied Crimea, the Russian Defense Ministry said Tuesday, noting that 116 of the drones were shot down over the Black Sea.
It was the fourth-largest Ukrainian drone attack on Russia, according to an Associated Press tally.
With Post wires
