US army secretary briefs ambassadors at ‘nightmare meeting’ in Kyiv on Friday after talks with Ukrainian leader
US officials have told Nato allies they expect to push president Volodymyr Zelenskyy into agreeing to a peace deal in the coming days, under the threat that if Kyiv does not sign, it will face a much worse deal in future.
The US army secretary, Dan Driscoll, briefed ambassadors from Nato nations at a meeting in Kyiv late on Friday, after talks with Zelenskyy and taking a phone call from the White House. “No deal is perfect, but it must be done sooner rather than later,” he told them, according to one person who was present.
The mood in the room was sombre, with several European ambassadors questioning the content of the deal and the way in which the US had conducted the negotiations with Russia without keeping allies informed.
A deal with Russia isn’t worth the paper it’s written on.
This war is only even possible because they’ve already violated an agreement they had with Ukraine. It would be insane for Ukraine to agree to a different deal for safety when they already did that and got back stabbed.
Meanwhile Europe will push Ukraine not to sign the deal (not that much persuasion will be necessary) because Europe doesn’t want to set the precedent that Russia can just eat away at Europe.
As for the threat from the US that Ukraine will get a worse deal if they don’t sign, given how crap the current deal is, I can’t see how it could reasonably get any worse, unless it’s total surrender, but that won’t fly because there would be literally no point even considering that. The Trump administration really are useless at negotiating, they think they can strong arm Ukraine, but they don’t actually have any cards.