US Army Secretary Dan Driscoll’s meetings with Russian officials in Abu Dhabi have intensified scrutiny of Donald Trump’s evolving peace initiative for Ukraine, as missile and drone strikes continue to hit Kyiv and other cities.
According to US and European officials, Driscoll has held at least one round of talks with a Russian delegation in the United Arab Emirates, following weekend negotiations with Ukrainian representatives in Geneva on a revised US peace framework.
Driscoll, a former army officer and Yale-trained lawyer, was confirmed earlier this year as US Secretary of the Army and has since emerged as a close associate of Vice-President JD Vance. He visited Kyiv in November for talks with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on possible terms for ending the war, in parallel with an intensifying White House effort to frame a ceasefire and broader security package. His subsequent role as a front-line envoy, despite limited diplomatic background, has been widely interpreted as a sign of Vance’s influence over the peace track.
The peace initiative itself began as a 28-point plan attributed to Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff and developed in close co-ordination with Kremlin-linked investment official Kirill Dmitriev, with input from Jared Kushner. Reporting in US and European media has described the original document as strongly aligned with long-standing Russian demands, including limits on Ukraine’s armed forces and steps effectively ruling out NATO membership, prompting alarm in Kyiv and among European allies.
Following criticism, US and Ukrainian officials met in Geneva over the weekend, in talks led by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and attended by Witkoff, Kushner and Driscoll. According to US briefings, that meeting produced an “updated and refined” framework, reportedly cutting the number of points from 28 to around 19 and removing some of the more contentious provisions on amnesty and long-term force limits. Zelenskyy has said publicly that Ukraine insisted on significant changes and that no deal can involve territorial concessions or limitations that undermine Ukrainian sovereignty.
Against this backdrop, Driscoll’s move from Geneva directly to Abu Dhabi has raised a central question in Kyiv and European capitals: which version of the plan is now being presented to Moscow? Ukrainian and European officials say they have not been informed in detail about the agenda for the Abu Dhabi channel and fear that the Russians may be seeing either an earlier, more favourable draft or a hybrid version that does not fully reflect the Ukrainian amendments.
The Kremlin’s public statements have added to the ambiguity. On 25 November, presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed that Russia had received what he called a “draft” of the US-backed plan, describing it as corresponding to the “spirit of Anchorage” – a reference to the August summit between Trump and Vladimir Putin in Alaska. At that meeting, held at Joint Base Elmendorf–Richardson, the two leaders failed to reach any formal agreement on Ukraine, despite Trump later saying that the talks were “very productive” and that there could be follow-up contacts involving Zelenskyy.
Meeting In Alaska: A Big Deal Without Any Peace Deal, by Mykhailo Gonchar
Russian officials, including presidential aide Yuri Ushakov, have indicated that Moscow is prepared to treat the Trump framework as a basis for further talks, while repeatedly criticising an alternative European peace outline put forward in recent days by EU leaders. Analytical commentary from European think-tanks has stressed that the original US draft, emerging from contacts between Witkoff and Dmitriev, took European governments by surprise and appeared to sideline their own efforts to shape a settlement consistent with Kyiv’s position and international law.
Meanwhile, Russian forces have continued large-scale strikes against Ukrainian infrastructure. In the hours around the latest announcement of US–Russian talks in Abu Dhabi, Russia launched a fresh wave of missile and drone attacks on Kyiv and other centres, heavily targeting the capital’s energy facilities and residential districts. Ukrainian officials argue that this pattern – military escalation combined with cautious rhetoric about dialogue – indicates that Moscow is using the diplomatic process to buy time while sustaining pressure on the battlefield.
The politics surrounding the plan in Washington are increasingly fraught. At the Halifax International Security Forum, several US senators said Rubio had privately described the initial 28-point document as essentially a Russian “wish list”, even as the State Department insists that the framework is an American proposal incorporating input from all sides. Lawmakers from both parties have warned that any settlement perceived as rewarding aggression or constraining Ukraine’s right to self-defence would be unacceptable.
Vice-President Vance has publicly defended the peace track, arguing that critics misunderstand the realities of the war and that a negotiated outcome must both halt the fighting and be acceptable to Kyiv and Moscow. Reporting in US and European media suggests his stance has brought him into open disagreement with senior Republicans in Congress who fear that the White House is moving towards terms too favourable to Russia.
Taken together, Driscoll’s role in the Abu Dhabi talks, the contested origins of the plan, Russia’s continued military strikes, and mounting resistance in Congress point to a peace process that remains highly uncertain. For Ukraine and its European partners, the key questions now are whether the latest revisions are sufficient to remove what they see as the most problematic provisions – and whether any eventual agreement will be negotiated with, rather than simply presented to, Kyiv.
