The Trump administration is racing to advance a rapidly evolving peace proposal for Ukraine, dispatching Army Secretary Dan Driscoll to Abu Dhabi on Tuesday to present a dramatically revised blueprint to Russian officials — one that abandons several concessions widely condemned as giveaways to President Vladimir Putin.

Driscoll’s trip comes just days after US and Ukrainian negotiators quietly rewrote the original 28-point framework in Geneva, stripping out provisions that Ukrainian officials blasted as a “Russian wish list” and replacing them with terms more acceptable to Kyiv.

According to officials familiar with the talks, the new roughly 19-point plan no longer demands that Ukraine cede the entire Donbas region to Moscow. Nor does it require Ukraine to abandon its hopes of eventually joining NATO — a key pre-war demand from Putin and one of the most explosive elements presented to President Volodymyr Zelensky by Driscoll during his visit to Kyiv last week.

Those thorny issues, negotiators agreed, will now be left to President Trump and Zelensky to decide at a later stage, rather than forced into the agreement at the outset.

In a warning posted on X following the Geneva revisions, Zelensky said Russia would move quickly to sabotage the new momentum toward a deal, likely through disinformation, fear tactics, and/or intensified military strikes.

“We can see which interests are intertwined, and who is trying to weaken our position — Ukraine’s position — spreading disinformation, intimidating our people,” Zelensky wrote. “We are countering every such attempt to derail the end of the war.”

Administration officials echoed Zelensky’s concerns, admitting privately that the original proposal resembled a pre-packaged settlement designed to reward Putin for nearly three years of destruction.

“Very few things are left from the original version,” Ukrainian First Deputy Foreign Minister Sergiy Kyslytsya told The Financial Times, adding that negotiators have now “developed a solid body of convergence.”

The White House had previously pressed Kyiv to sign on to the 28-point deal by Thanksgiving. But both Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio have since distanced themselves from that ultimatum, with Trump insisting Sunday that it was not a “final offer,” and Rubio describing the plan as “a living, breathing document.”

Driscoll now faces a crucial test in Abu Dhabi: whether Moscow will engage with a deal that no longer hands Putin key territorial and geopolitical victories.

As the revised framework moved forward, Moscow unleashed one of its most destructive assault waves in weeks, launching 22 missiles and more than 460 attack drones across Ukraine overnight, much of it aimed at Kyiv.

At least seven people were killed in the capital, with fires tearing through residential high-rises and critical infrastructure knocked offline. Water, heat, and electricity were lost in several districts as emergency crews rushed to rescue trapped civilians.

Russia claimed the attacks were retaliation for recent Ukrainian drone strikes on Russian civilian infrastructure. Ukraine’s strikes overnight killed at least three people in Taganrog, a southern Russian city near the border.

Neighboring Romania and Moldova reported that Russian drones violated their airspace during the bombardment.

With Driscoll sitting down Tuesday across from Russian negotiators in the United Arab Emirates, both sides will test whether the war is finally nearing its end.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)