“For starters, this will be an agreement between the United States and Ukraine. This is a comprehensive plan to end the war,” Butler said.
According to him, Zelensky and Driscoll held a private meeting lasting about an hour, after which negotiations took place in a broader format.
“President [Соединенных Штатов Дональд] Trump sent representatives of the US Army because we have been partners with the Ukrainians from day one. We are here to support the Ukrainians, as we have throughout this conflict, and we are here to make sure this is a good plan for the Ukrainian people,” Butler said.
Context
Media reported on November 19 that Trump had endorsed a 28-point plan to “achieve peace” between aggressor Russia and Ukraine, which his team had been quietly developing in consultation with Russian envoy Kirill Dmitriev over the past few weeks. According to Axios, Trump's special envoy Steve Witkoff held three days of talks with Dmitriev on this issue in late October.
Western media published some details of the proposal. Among them is granting the status of the state language to the Russian language; media sources also claim that, according to the plan, the United States may recognize the occupied Donbass and Crimea as Russian, Ukraine will be required to reduce the size of its army by half, sanctions will be lifted from Russia and investigations into its war crimes in Ukraine will be stopped. FT wrote that this means the capitulation of Ukraine and that the agreement is very convenient for the illegitimate Russian President Vladimir Putin.
WSJ added that we are also talking about Ukraine’s refusal to join NATO “for at least several years” and a ban on the deployment of international peacekeeping forces on the country’s territory.
On November 20, the US delegation led by Driscoll officially handed over to Zelensky a draft “peace plan”, which, according to the American side, can intensify diplomacy. Teams from Ukraine and the United States will work on the points of the “peace plan” to end the war, Zelensky noted after a meeting with the Pentagon delegation. The media wrote that at the meeting they agreed on “strict deadlines” for signing the “peace plan.”
