A senior US military official has traveled to Abu Dhabi for “secret talks” with a Russian delegation on resolving the Ukraine conflict, CBS and ABC News reported on Tuesday. The purported meeting follows negotiations in Geneva between Washington and Kiev in which the two sides reviewed a US-drafted peace plan.
US Army Secretary Dan Driscoll met members of a Russian delegation for several hours on Monday night in Abu Dhabi and was expected to continue discussions on Tuesday “to move the peace negotiations forward,” CBS said, citing an unnamed American official.
ABC News confirmed the report, adding that the composition of both the US and Russian delegations remained unclear. According to Politico, Driscoll is presenting the peace framework negotiated during the US-Ukraine talks in Geneva at the weekend.
Earlier media reports indicated that the initial US-drafted plan requires Ukraine to stay outside NATO, relinquish the parts of the new Russian regions in Donbass still under Kiev’s control, freeze the front lines in the Russian regions of Kherson and Zaporozhye, and cap the size of the Ukrainian Army.
EU leaders – who were not invited to Geneva – have expressed concern about the reported terms, with several capitals signaling they oppose both territorial concessions and any requirement that Ukraine abandon plans to join NATO.
Russia has said it remains in contact with Washington and has received the broad outlines of the plan, but has not had the opportunity to discuss it with the US in detail.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov described the wave of speculation around the plan as “an information bacchanalia” and stressed that Moscow “does not engage in megaphone diplomacy.”
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov accused EU politicians of leaking the drafted terms in an effort “to undermine the understandings being discussed.”
Russia, he said, wants to proceed “as diplomats normally do, to reach confidential understandings before announcing what has been agreed.” “Any other approach exposes useful initiatives to the risk of attacks from those who would like to undermine them,” the minister added.
