U.S. Army Secretary Dan Driscoll reportedly shuttled between Russian and Ukrainian delegations in Abu Dhabi this week to press for a peace framework that would reduce Kiev’s military to 800,000 troops, a concession that has raised concerns across Europe that Washington is trading Ukraine’s long-term security for short-term diplomatic wins.
The closed-door meeting followed a weekend of talks in Geneva in which U.S. and Ukrainian negotiators cut a controversial 28-point proposal to 19, according to the Financial Times.
While Ukrainian officials insist the revised framework better reflects their country’s priorities, a U.S. official told CBS News that Kiev had “mostly accepted” the plan, with only some details left in place. This feature contradicts President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s warning that “a lot of work remains.”
In Moscow, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warned on Tuesday that any final agreement would need to maintain the understanding reached at the Alaska summit earlier this year.
“If the spirit and letter of Anchorage were erased, the situation would be fundamentally different,” he said, while praising the Trump administration as the only Western actor showing initiative.
The opaque process has left European capitals struggling with a framework that would reportedly accept Russian control over occupied territory and abandon Ukraine’s NATO aspirations, a security trade-off that Brussels officials warn could be institutionally destabilizing.
The diplomacy highlights a harsh reality, with President Zelensky reportedly planning to finalize terms directly with President Trump in Washington later this month. After three and a half years of war, Kiev appears ready to accept limits on its sovereignty brokered by its alleged allies rather than its own decision-makers.