British and European officials met in Kiev on Friday with President Donald Trump’s envoy, U.S. Army Secretary Dan Driscoll, who filled them in on the U.S.’s proposed 28 Point plan to bring peace to Ukraine, and communicated Trump’s demand that Ukrainian acting President Volodymyr Zelenskyy stop being an obstacle and agree to the plan by Thanksgiving, Nov. 27.
According to a Financial Times account, as reported by RT, Driscoll was beyond blunt: “We need to get this shit done.… We have a narrow window for peace—President Trump wants peace now.… The U.S. Armed Forces love Ukraine ... but it is the honest U.S. military assessment that Ukraine is in a very bad position.” It is widely recognized that Ukraine is suffering serious defeats and loss of significant territory almost daily.
But the gathered British and European officials were aghast at the prospect that peace might break out. “It turns out that this is even worse than we thought,” one participant confessed to the Financial Times. The Guardian provided a similar report, calling it “a nightmare meeting.” “The U.S. army secretary, Dan Driscoll, briefed ambassadors from NATO nations at a meeting in Kiev late on Friday, after talks with Zelenskyy and taking a phone call from the White House. ‘No deal is perfect, but it must be done sooner rather than later,’ he told them, according to one person who was present. The mood in the room was somber, with several European ambassadors questioning the content of the deal and the way in which the U.S. had conducted the negotiations with Russia without keeping allies informed. ‘It was a nightmare meeting. It was the ‘you have “no cards” argument again,’ said the source, referring to Trump’s claim that Zelenskyy had no cards to play, during a contentious White House meeting back in February.”
