Developing: The White House is trying again to convince Vladimir Putin to end his military invasion and occupation of Ukraine. According to the latest draft of a U.S.-proposed peace plan, Ukraine would cut its army in half and cede to Russia 20,000 square miles of its coal-rich Donbas region, which consists of the partially-occupied eastern Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts, the Financial Times reported Wednesday.
The Trump administration also wants Russian to be Ukraine’s official language, and it wants “Ukraine to abandon key categories of weaponry and would include the rollback of US military assistance that has been vital to its defence,” FT’s Chris Miller reported, citing people with knowledge of the U.S. document.
The 28-point plan was drafted by Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff and Russian special envoy Kirill Dmitriev after three days of meetings in Miami last month, Axios reported Wednesday. Ukrainian officials were kept out of that process.
Latest: Trump sent Army Secretary Dan Driscoll to Ukraine to pressure President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and military officials to accept the terms, Politico reported Tuesday. Driscoll is joined by Army chief Gen. Randy George, his top enlisted soldier Michael Weimer, as well as U.S. Army Europe and Africa commander Gen. Chris Donahue, the BBC reports from Kyiv. The U.S. delegation met Ukraine’s top military commander Oleksandr Syrskyi Wednesday evening.
European officials expressed alarm over the planned concessions from Ukraine, with European Commission Vice President Kaja Kallas telling reporters Thursday, “[F]or any plan to work, it needs Ukrainians and Europeans on board. In this war, there is one aggressor and one victim. So far, we haven’t heard of any concessions from Russia’s side,” she said.
“[P]eace cannot be a capitulation,” French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said Thursday in Brussels. Another European Union defense official told Politico, “Europeans have not been consulted on this. But there’s a wing inside the White House who for some time have seen Europeans as ‘spoilers’ in the peace process, so in a way, it’s not surprising.” The official added, “The Russians have clearly identified Witkoff as someone who is willing to promote their interests.”
Worth noting: “A peace deal that requires Kyiv to hand over territory to Russia would not only be deeply unpopular with Ukrainians, it also would be illegal under Ukraine’s constitution,” the Associated Press reports. What’s more, President “Zelenskyy has repeatedly ruled out such a possibility.”
Russian officials said there are no talks taking place. “Consultations are not currently underway. There are contacts, of course, but there is no process that could be called consultations,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Thursday, Reuters reports.
But White House officials said they’ll get Ukraine and Russia to agree to some form of this new plan “as soon as this week,” Politico reported Wednesday.
Commentary: This new peace plan from Trump amounts to a “self-defeating reversal,” Tom Wright of Brookings argues, writing Thursday in The Atlantic. This is partly because “the plan emerged at a moment when Donald Trump’s Ukraine policy had finally found its footing after a very turbulent start.”
How so? “The United States was no longer spending money on Ukraine. Ukraine and the Europeans were close to putting together a $90 billion arms purchase, much of which would be produced in the United States and be a boon to the American defense industry,” says Wright. “The United States could continue arms sales while insisting on a peace settlement that allows for an independent and sovereign Ukraine—and Trump might have had a deal to end the war later in 2026 or in 2027. Instead, Witkoff may have convinced himself that he could reproduce the deal that ended the war in Gaza. [But] The circumstances there were fundamentally different.” (More on the Gaza ceasefire in the additional reading links below.)
After all, “Russia has demanded these concessions for years, but the Trump administration, to its credit, has rejected them before now,” Wright points out. Continue reading (gift link), here.
Meanwhile, Russia is renewing its attacks on Ukraine’s energy grid, with an estimated 400,000 Ukrainians affected and outages in the capital city of Kyiv expected to last as long as 18 hours today, according to Ukrainian officials.
Panning out: See how Russian missile and drone attacks on Ukraine have risen sharply since May in a graph compiled by the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War, here.
Analyst reax: “Russia has sustained heavy losses in this war and risks greater long-term damage by extending the war, but Moscow can still inflict considerable damage on Ukraine,” Rob Lee of the Foreign Policy Research Institute wrote Wednesday on social media. “Russia has demonstrated a capacity to sustain heavy costs, and it is unclear when it might reach a breaking point. The strains of the war are growing for both sides, and Ukraine’s foreign supporters should not become complacent. The situation can still deteriorate further,” he warned.
New: Ukraine used U.S. long-range ATACMS missiles to hit Russian territory for the first time during the Trump administration, the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday, citing a Tuesday announcement by the Ukrainian military chief.
Rewind: Kyiv fired short-range ATACMS in late 2023 and longer-ranged ones in 2024, The War Zone reminds us, but the Trump White House had restricted their use until September. TWZ also rounded up what’s publicly known about Ukraine’s inventory of these missiles, here.
In other U.S. weapons, you can watch a 15-second video of a Ukrainian F-16 chasing a Russian cruise missile on Telegram, here.
Developing: Iranian nuclear experts made more than one covert trip to Russia last year, with available evidence suggesting Iran is “seeking laser technology and expertise that could help them validate a nuclear weapon design without conducting a nuclear explosive test,” the Financial Times reported Wednesday. Just last month, the U.S. State Department sanctioned the front company that organized the trips to Russia, accusing them of “facilitat[ing] travel for Iranian nuclear experts to Russia to pursue sensitive dual-use technologies and expertise.”
Additional reading:
Welcome to this Thursday edition of The D Brief, a newsletter dedicated to developments affecting the future of U.S. national security, brought to you by Ben Watson and Bradley Peniston. It’s more important than ever to stay informed, so thank you for reading. Share your tips and feedback here. And if you’re not already subscribed, you can do that here. On this day in 1985, Microsoft released Windows 1.0.
Around the Defense Department
Military aircraft crashes skyrocketed from 2020 to 2024, new data shows. The number of Class A mishaps—the deadliest and costliest category—per 100,000 flight hours rose from 1.3 in fiscal 2020 to 2.02 in fiscal 2024, according to data provided to Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass. Last year saw a four-year high for every service except the Navy.
The Pentagon data included the Class A mishap rates of its 10 most-used aircraft. The list was topped by the H-60 helicopter, which was involved in 23 total incidents per four years worth of flight hours.
AEI’s Mackenzie Eaglen says past operations and maintenance spending failed to keep up with inflation and the pace of use. “Shockingly, military aviation units in separate branches in the armed services are currently cannibalizing aircraft parts to get planes flying,” Eaglen said. “The decade-long budget control act, followed by sequestration, followed by budgets that did not keep pace with generational record-high inflation mean there is a lot of time, work, and money needed to reverse these trends.” Defense One’s Thomas Novelly has more, here.
Additional reading:
Trump 2.0
Developing: Trump has reportedly authorized CIA covert action inside Venezuela, the New York Times reported Tuesday, noting those operations “could be meant to prepare a battlefield for further action.”
At the same time, White House officials have “opened up back-channel negotiations” with Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro, who has allegedly “signaled a willingness to offer access to his country’s oil wealth to American energy companies,” the Times reports.
The way forward? There appear to be at least three options on the table, including Trump forging some kind of “diplomatic deal to gain more access to the Venezuela oil resources for American companies,” or Maduro could “voluntarily give up power,” or military action to implement regime change in Caracas. Read more (gift link), here.
Trump issues call to punish lawmakers for making video. In a series of social media posts Thursday morning, the U.S. president called for the arrest of Democratic lawmakers who posted a video on Tuesday urging members of the military to refuse illegal orders. The chief executive, who is charged with upholding U.S. law, called the video “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!” He also retweeted a call to “HANG THEM.” Kyle Cheney of Politico has more.
Elsewhere stateside, the Border Patrol is now monitoring U.S. drivers and detaining folks with “suspicious” travel patterns, AP reported Thursday.
How it works: “A network of cameras scans and records vehicle license plate information, and an algorithm flags vehicles deemed suspicious based on where they came from, where they were going and which route they took. Federal agents in turn may then flag local law enforcement.” That system “Started about a decade ago to fight illegal border-related activities and the trafficking of both drugs and people, [but] it has expanded over the past five years,” AP writes.
A key component of this surveillance network: License plate readers. If you’ve served on a grand jury recently, it’s possible you’ve heard about the near-ubiquity of these devices, which can be installed almost anywhere—from intersections to Walmart parking lots. “Readers are often disguised along highways in traffic safety equipment like drums and barrels,” AP reports.
Background: “The Border Patrol has for years hidden details of its license plate reader program, trying to keep any mention of the program out of court documents and police reports…even going so far as to propose dropping charges rather than risk revealing any details about the placement and use of their covert license plate readers.” Continue reading, here.
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