US army secretary Dan Driscoll arrived in Abu Dhabi on Monday for talks with Ukraine’s military intelligence chief and a Russian delegation as Washington pushes a peace deal to end the Kremlin’s war.

From the front-line city of Pokrovsk in eastern Donetsk, to Zaporizhzhia in the south, there is little doubt that Russia is making advances. But, battlefield monitors suggest the picture is not quite so bleak for Ukraine as Trump and Putin suggest.

The war in Ukraine has been raging for almost four years; 11 if you start with Crimea’s annexation in 2014. So many predictions have proved wrong along the way: Russia will win within a week. Ukraine is winning, against the odds. Western sanctions will bleed Russia dry and force it to the negotiating table.

Crucial input from a Kremlin confidant influenced the document that for a week roiled relations between the U.S., Ukraine and Europe.

A proposed peace plan for Ukraine led by the United States has been met with anguish by many Ukrainians, who fear a post-war amnesty for Russian forces would erase accountability for alleged atrocitie

Ukrainian, American and European officials gathered in Geneva on Nov. 23 to discuss a draft plan presented by Washington to end the war in Ukraine.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy shared a lengthy response after Trump blamed Ukrainian leadership for its “violent and terrible” war with Russia.

Mass graves and bullet-scarred churches mark the torment of the Kyiv suburb of Bucha under Russian occupation, where traumatised residents now face a new anguish: a U.S.-led peace proposal that would offer a blanket post-war amnesty for the perpetrators of atrocities. (AP video shot by Oleksii Yeroshenko)