From NBC / Yahoo!News:
"U.S. Army secretary warned Ukraine of imminent defeat while pushing initial peace plan
In a meeting with Ukrainian officials in Kyiv last week, U.S. Army Secretary Dan Driscoll delivered a grim assessment.
Driscoll told his counterparts their troops faced a dire situation on the battlefield and would suffer an imminent defeat against Russian forces, two sources with knowledge of the matter told NBC News.
The Russians were ramping up the scale and pace of their aerial attacks, and they had the ability to fight on indefinitely, Driscoll told them, according to the sources. The situation for Ukraine would only get worse over time, he continued, and it was better to negotiate a peace settlement now rather than end up in an even weaker position in the future.
And there was more bad news. The U.S. delegation also said America’s defense industry could not keep supplying Ukraine with the weapons and air defenses at the rate needed to protect the country’s infrastructure and population, the sources said.
Driscoll’s message came after he had presented a U.S.-backed peace plan that Kyiv officials viewed as a capitulation to Moscow, according to the two sources.
“The message was basically — you are losing,” one of the sources said, “and you need to accept the deal.”
The meeting between Driscoll and the Ukrainians was part of an effort by some Trump administration officials to press the Ukrainians to accept the new U.S.-backed peace proposal without delay, even though it embraced Russia’s maximalist demands and required painful concessions from Kyiv’s government, multiple current and former Western officials said.
Ukraine politely declined to sign on to the peace plan as it was presented, and the proposal has been heavily revised since the discussions between Driscoll and Ukrainian officials last week.
The meeting was just the latest example of a long-running rift inside the Trump administration over how to end the war in Ukraine. The split features a looming potential political rivalry between two former senators and potential presidential hopefuls positioning themselves for 2028: Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
One camp, including Vance, special envoy Steve Witkoff and other officials, views Ukraine as the primary obstacle to peace and favors using U.S. leverage to force Kyiv to make major compromises, according to multiple current and former officials.
The other camp, represented by Rubio and other officials, sees Russia as the culprit for having launched an unprovoked invasion of its neighbor and says Moscow will relent only if it pays a price for its aggression through sanctions and other pressure...
The frenetic diplomacy began last week after a purported 28-point U.S. peace plan leaked to the media...
White House officials told reporters it was an American proposal, even though the document embraced Russia’s repeated demands to force Ukraine to cede territory it controls, scale back its military and give up ever joining the NATO alliance. Some elements of the plan contradicted the Trump administration’s previously stated positions, including language that implied U.S. military forces would be barred from Poland.
Republican and Democratic senators said Rubio had told them it was a plan drafted by the Russians. But Rubio later said their account was false, and he and the White House later insisted it was a U.S. proposal with Russian and Ukrainian “input.”
In an unusual move, the White House chose Driscoll, the Army secretary, to brief the Ukrainians on the proposal, instead of a senior diplomat. Driscoll, an old Yale Law School classmate of Vance’s, was headed to Ukraine on a previously scheduled visit to discuss drone technology, NBC News previously reported...
Trump, meanwhile, ramped up pressure on Ukraine, telling reporters that Zelenskyy’s choice was to accept a peace deal or “continue to fight his little heart out.”
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And a small detail by Euromaidan Press:
"According to FT, European officials in Kyiv asked Driscoll whether Washington saw Russian war crimes accountability as essential. FT says he deflected their questions, angering them further. FT quotes a former senior defense official who said Driscoll often shifts political positions easily, while another European official called his tone with western diplomats “nauseating”.
FT says that Driscoll echoed US Vice-President JD Vance, saying: “There are cities, locations under dispute that will be in Russian hands, it is just a matter of time. If we do not recognize that, then the decision to fight must weigh: how many lives are you willing to sacrifice? The deal does not get better from here, it gets worse.”
The New York Times earlier reported that Driscoll used Russia’s growing threat to “sell” a quick peace deal that would harm Ukraine."
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