Army Secretary Dan Driscoll is the latest senior U.S. official to travel to Ukraine as part of the Trump administration’s effort to end the largest land war in Europe since World War II, according to a U.S. official.
His arrival comes as the United States is renewing its push to end the Russia-Ukraine war, which is nearing its fourth anniversary, though Kyiv remains skeptical about Moscow’s willingness to negotiate in good faith.
Driscoll arrived on Wednesday with other senior military leaders, including Gen. Randy George, the Army chief of staff, and they will meet with senior Ukrainian government, military, and defense industry officials, the U.S. official said.
“The president identified and designated the secretary of the Army as another key representative of the U.S. government to restart peace negotiations to work with the Ukrainians and try to keep moving this stuff forward,” the U.S. official told the Washington Examiner. “We acknowledge and know that this is not going to be necessarily a very simple process.”
US strikes a delicate balance with separate negotiations
The Trump administration has sought since its beginning to end the Russia-Ukraine war but has had little success. Despite overtures to the Russians that the previous administration was unwilling to make, the Kremlin has not responded in kind, and the Ukrainians do not expect that to change. Instead, the Russians have sought to achieve the goals they have not accomplished militarily through these negotiating efforts.
A Ukrainian official told the Washington Examiner that the U.S. is attempting to function as a third-party negotiator by synthesizing each country’s demands separately.
“We know that Witkoff was preparing something with [Kirill] Dmitriev, which can be put on the table as a Russian view — and [that’s] how it works with both sides,” the Ukrainian official told the Washington Examiner. “Americans are dealing with the Russian side and with the Ukrainian side separately. We are proposing our plans, they are proposing their plans, and then the American side tries to negotiate something in common.”
President Donald Trump has, at times, criticized both Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky when their efforts to end the war have come up short, but he expressed optimism this week that he could still bring about lasting peace.
“I’ve actually stopped eight wars,” he said Tuesday. “I have another one to go with Putin. I’m a little surprised at Putin. It is taking longer than I thought.”
Trump’s primary negotiators for this conflict are Steve Witkoff, his special envoy for the Middle East, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
This is Driscoll’s first visit to Ukraine since assuming his position, while War Secretary Pete Hegseth has not made the trip to date.
“The secretary is not there independently, but he’s there as part of work with Mr. Witkoff, Mr. Rubio, the president, etc, to try to create this added emphasis that we want to get this moving forward quickly,” the U.S. official added.
Driscoll brings a drone focus
In his tenure as Army secretary, the Yale law school classmate of Vice President JD Vance has emphasized the service’s need for rapid development and proliferation of autonomous systems and counterdrone technology, which is an area it could learn from the Ukrainians.
“All of the drone innovation and the employment of those types of things, the electronic warfare, all of that type of stuff that’s super valuable, it’s always been something that the U.S. military, since the start of this conflict, has really wanted to learn from and pull from,” the U.S. official said. “So they’re definitely going to be trying to pull as much of that as they can and learn about it.”
The Ukrainians’ ingenuity regarding the proliferation and development of attack drones and counterdrone technology is an area where they could aid the U.S.
“We have this Driscoll visit to Ukraine and it’s the first high-level visit since the new administration,” the Ukrainian official told the Washington Examiner. “It’s a good sign because … he’s a close friend of other important people, so it’s not only military[-focused], not only about drones or ceasefires — it’s a little bit more political.”
The State Department said in March that the U.S. had provided Ukraine with $66.9 billion in military assistance since Russia launched its full-scale invasion. The Trump administration figured out a new method to get weapons to Ukrainians, in which European countries buy the weapons from the U.S. and give them to Ukraine, that way the U.S. no longer foots the bill.
Russia is feeling the heat of US sanctions
Peace talks with Russia came to a halt after Trump canceled a second round of talks with Putin in Budapest, Hungary, last month. The attempt to meet again came after little was achieved in their first meeting in Alaska in August.
“It just, it didn’t feel right to me,” Trump said last month. “It didn’t feel like we were going to get to the place we have to get. So I canceled it.”
After the cancellation, Trump implemented new sanctions on Russia’s two largest oil companies, Rosneft and Lukoil.
Roughly a month since the sanctions were announced, they are having their “intended effect of dampening Russian revenues,” according to an initial market reaction by the Office of Foreign Assets Control released on Tuesday.
“President Trump has targeted Russia’s two largest oil companies in one of the most impactful Treasury actions to date,” a Treasury spokesperson said. “Russian oil is now selling at multi-year lows, starving Putin’s war machine. President Trump is the peace-and-prosperity President, and Treasury is prepared to take further action if necessary to end the senseless killing.”
The Senate is also moving forward with legislation that would further U.S. sanctions on Russia now that Trump has publicly backed the decision, which he had held off on doing for months.
Initial US-Russia plan hands over Donbas region
On the battlefield, there’s limited movement along the front lines of the war in the Donbas region. Russia controls most of the Donbas, which consists of the Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts, but not all of the latter area. Far from the front lines, Russian forces use drones and missiles to target key Ukrainian infrastructure ahead of the winter months with the goal of destroying the Ukrainians’ spirit and will to continue fighting.
The Trump administration has reportedly come up with a new plan on how to end the conflict, according to Axios, though it is unclear how this proposal has bridged the divides that have collapsed previous efforts, which primarily include where to draw new borders and how to ensure Russia does not restart the war when it is beneficial for them. It’s also unknown whether European countries would support the undisclosed proposal.
The supposed plan includes Ukraine giving up the part of the Donbas it still holds, in exchange for a U.S. security guarantee for Ukraine and Europe against future Russian aggression, though it is unclear how that guarantee would work. Ukrainian leaders have said repeatedly that they would not willingly give up Ukrainian territory as part of negotiations to end the war.
Russia has also sought to put limits on the size of Ukraine’s military.
The Ukrainian official is “not very optimistic” about the prospect of a peace deal emerging from the talks, but noted their “bottom-line” demands remain largely unchanged from previous rounds of negotiation — a freeze on hostilities along the current front lines and security guarantees provided by the Coalition of the Willing, an alliance of European powers backing the Ukrainian war effort.
“We put a lot of hope on the American side because we actually have the president of the United States, who made a personal commitment to stop this war,” the Ukrainian official added. “And we also have agreement with [the U.S.] on these basic things, like security guarantees and ceasefire first — so we count that they will move forward from this point with the Russian side. But with the Russian side, we are not optimistic at all.”
Domestic scandals hinder Zelensky’s negotiation position
Renewed optimism from the U.S. on peace negotiations comes at the same time that Zelensky’s position has been somewhat compromised due to a corruption scandal.
The National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office accused several of the Ukrainian president’s closest allies of engaging in large-scale corruption activities surrounding the Energoatom state nuclear energy company.
At the core of the accusations are two of Zelensky’s closest allies: businessman Timur Mindich and Andriy Yermak, the head of the Ukrainian president’s office.
Ukrainian officials inside Zelensky’s own party worry that the scandal, which has upended domestic politics since coming to light earlier this month.
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“The coalition is simply being torn apart,” a member of Zelensky’s Servant of the People Party told Ukrainska Pravda. “Many enemies have smelled blood when they have money. Our deputies are already being offered ‘cooperation.’ This could actually be the end of everything if there are no tough decisions from the president.”
Mindich fled Ukraine just hours before investigators arrived to search his home last week, and his whereabouts are unknown, while Zelensky is facing immense pressure to fire Yermak from his role in the presidential office.
