KYIV—When Secretary of the Army Dan Driscoll presented the White House’s 28-point proposal to end the war in Ukraine on Thursday, he told President Volodymyr Zelensky, “We have a narrow window for peace—President Trump wants peace now.”
The timing of the ultimatum, which European allies have described as a “capitulation” to Moscow, was no coincidence: President Zelensky has been embroiled in a wide-reaching corruption scandal, forcing him to dismiss top ministers and distance himself from key supporters. The White House, according to Western officials speaking to the Financial Times, saw this as an opportunity to force a weakened president into an unfavorable deal.
It may do just the opposite.
Ukrainian officials told me that President Zelensky will not sign the White House’s plan. He spent the weekend delivering defiant speeches to the Ukrainian public, developing a counterproposal with European supporters—and turning to political allies who have been tarred by the scandal to lead the negotiations, which began on Sunday. “There is no better moment. . . to get the public’s focus off the corruption scandal and unite the country around something much more important, much more existential,” Andriy Shevchenko, who served as Zelensky’s deputy minister of defense in 2023, told me.
