The U.S. Army secretary, Daniel P. Driscoll, is in the United Arab Emirates for scheduled meetings with a Russian delegation about President Trump’s latest plan for peace in Ukraine, a U.S. official said.
The conversations, which were to have taken place in Abu Dhabi, the capital, on Tuesday, are the latest turn in the Trump administration’s flurry of new meetings aimed at ending Russia’s four years of war in Ukraine.
The talks were set as some Trump administration officials believed that revisions to the peace framework that emerged from meetings between U.S. and Ukrainian negotiators could lead President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia to dismiss it out of hand.
The administration had been pressuring Ukraine to accept a 28-point peace plan that called for the country to make concessions that its president, Volodymyr Zelensky, and allies had already largely rejected, including giving up land and limiting the size of its military.
Ukraine’s European allies had criticized the 28-point proposal because it was initially negotiated between the United States and Russia, without Ukrainian involvement. And by Monday, the plan had shrunk to closer to 20 points, setting aside for future negotiations some of Ukraine’s “red lines,” including capping the size of its military, a proposed ban on NATO troops inside Ukraine, and the boundaries between the two sides.
Mr. Driscoll was in Geneva over the weekend for talks with the Ukrainian delegation. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Steve Witkoff, a special U.S. envoy, also attended those talks, but neither is in Abu Dhabi for the meetings with the Russians, the official said.
Mr. Trump had said that he expected an answer from Mr. Zelensky on the proposal by Thursday but also said that the deadline could be extended.
Helene Cooper is a Pentagon correspondent for The Times. She was previously an editor, diplomatic correspondent and White House correspondent.
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