The United States Army Secretary Dan Driscoll has warned Ukraine that its defeat is “imminent.” Driscoll urged Kiev to accept a U.S.-drafted peace deal before its position deteriorates further, NBC News reported on Tuesday, citing people briefed on the talks.

Russia has long maintained that Ukraine cannot win this war and that aid from the West will only prolong Kiev’s inevitable loss. Russian forces have been pressing forward in the war, going on the offensive recently in Donbass and elsewhere while Ukraine complains about a lack of money, weapons, and human cannon fodder.

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In a meeting with Ukrainian officials in Kiev last week, Driscoll told his counterparts that their troops “faced a dire situation on the battlefield and would suffer an imminent defeat against Russian forces,” NBC reported, citing two sources.

The U.S. is said to have come up with a peace plan for Russia and Ukraine. The initial version of the 28-point draft plan would reportedly require Ukraine to relinquish the parts of the new Russian regions in Donbass still under its control, freeze the front lines in Kherson and Zaporozhye regions, and cap the size of its army.

According to the NBC News report, Kiev refused to sign the deal, which has since been amended. Several media reports also suggest that Driscoll held “secret talks” with the Russian delegation in Abu Dhabi on Monday and Tuesday.

“It was clear for some time that there was a divide, but we’ve never seen it in action publicly quite the way we have in the last few days,” said a former senior U.S. diplomat with experience in Eastern Europe.

NBC described the talks between Driscoll and Ukrainian officials as a sign of a long-running rift in the Trump administration between Vice President J.D. Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

While Vance’s camp is seeking to push Kiev to compromise and see it “as the primary obstacle to peace,” supporters of Rubio believe that the Ukraine conflict could be settled by pressuring Russia, the network said. Vance and Rubio have denied being at odds over Ukraine. –RT

Russia has said it will maintain talks with the U.S. while avoiding “megaphone diplomacy” that it says will damage peace talks.