Top US officials in Ukraine for talks on ending war with Russia
The US military said senior Pentagon officials came to Ukraine “to discuss efforts to end the war” with Russia.
The team led by US Army Secretary Dan Driscoll is expected to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in Kiev upon his return from his visit to Türkiye on Thursday.
On Wednesday, news began to emerge that the United States and Russia were preparing a new peace plan that included major concessions from Ukraine. Neither Washington nor Moscow has officially approved the plan.
In the early hours of the day, At least 26 people died in Russia’s missile and drone attack on the city of Ternopil in western Ukraine. officials there said. Russia launched a large-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
“Secretary Driscoll and his team arrived in Kiev this morning on behalf of the administration on a fact-finding mission to meet with Ukrainian officials and discuss efforts to end the war,” Army spokesman Col David Butler said in a statement. he said.
Driscoll is accompanied by U.S. Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George, the U.S. military’s top commander in Europe, Gen. Chris Donahue, and Army Major General Michael Weimer.
Driscoll and Gen. George became the highest-ranking U.S. military officials to meet in Ukraine’s capital since President Donald Trump took office in January.
A photo from Wednesday showed Driscoll meeting and shaking hands with Ukrainian Defense Minister Denys Shmyhal.
In a subsequent post on X, Shmyhal said: “We are focused on the next steps towards implementing the historic defense agreements reached by President Zelensky and President Trump.”
He also thanked Washington for “approving the sale of a support package worth approximately $105 million (£80 million) for the PATRIOT air defense system.”
Earlier, a Ukrainian official told BBC’s US media partner CBS that discussions on the trip would focus on the military situation on the ground as well as plans for a possible ceasefire.
The unnamed official said: “Presidents Zelensky and Trump have already agreed to stop the conflict within the framework of the current engagement, and there are also agreements on the provision of security guarantees.”
This comes as some media outlets report that the United States and Russia are privately preparing proposals on how to end the war.
Citing sources familiar with the matter, Axios, Financial Times and Reuters reported that the plans call for Kiev to give up some territory and weapons, as well as significantly reduce the size of the Ukrainian Armed Forces.
Trump’s special representative Steve Witkoff and Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s envoy Kirill Dmitriev are believed to be working on a 28-point peace plan.
The BBC asked the White House and a representative for Witkoff for comment.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov downplayed the reports.
“In this case, we have no innovations in addition to what we call ‘Anchorage spirit,'” he told Russia’s state media on Wednesday. Summit between Putin and Trump in the US state of Alaska in August.
The agreements reached at the one-day meeting were not made public.
President Zelensky has repeatedly rejected any territorial concessions to Russia.
Kiev and its Western allies, including the United States, had been calling for an immediate ceasefire along the broad front line, but Moscow rejected this and repeated demands that Ukraine said amounted to a de facto surrender.
Earlier this month, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Moscow’s preconditions for a peace deal – including territorial surrender, tough limits on the size of the Ukrainian army and the country’s neutrality – had not changed since Putin laid them out two months before a full-scale invasion.
