Dan Driscoll kept everyone waiting. The United States secretary of the Army had been due to arrive earlier today at the U.S. ambassador’s residence in Kyiv to speak with diplomats from NATO member states. The guests were eager to hear about the 28-point peace plan Driscoll had delivered on behalf of the Trump administration to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. But what they heard when Driscoll finally got there left some of the Europeans infuriated. “I feel nauseous,” one diplomat told us afterward. “It’s like the world is shattering around us, and we are watching it in real time.”

That no-man’s-land on the 38th parallel, along with the Berlin Wall (which fell 36 years ago this month), is among the most potent symbols of the Cold War. The DMZ is anything but peaceful, with artillery cannons poised on either side, incursion tunnels dug into the ground, and military aircraft patrolling the sky. Hundreds of soldiers have been killed in cease-fire violations over the years.

In past interviews, Zelensky has referred to the DMZ as a conflict-resolution model that Ukraine would follow at its peril. “It would be a dead zone,” he told one of us in March.

The front lines in Ukraine run for more than 600 miles through the prime industrial and agricultural regions of the nation’s east and south, with thousands of towns and villages around them. “When the line is that long,” Zelensky said in the March interview, “a frozen conflict always leads to military clashes of one kind or another.” He recalled explaining this to President Donald Trump in February, during their contentious meeting in the Oval Office: “When you divide people like this, no peace will come to those towns.”

Driscoll did not provide much detail to the Europeans about what this new iron curtain in Europe would look like, how it would be built, or who would protect it. “But he was excited about how high-tech it would be,” one of the European diplomats told us, recalling promises of advanced U.S. technology, such as drones and sensors, that would be much more 21st-century than the fortifications that divide the two Koreas.

Trump’s 28-point plan references a “neutral, demilitarized buffer zone” that would be established once Ukrainian forces withdraw from Donetsk Oblast, in the east of the country. The zone would be recognized as belonging to Russia, according to multiple reports of the plan’s provisions. A spokesperson for Driscoll told us after today’s meeting that the secretary had discussed “U.S. intentions, the urgency and momentum we’ve achieved. It was a positive exchange.” In an address to the nation this morning, Zelensky said that Ukraine faces “one of the hardest moments in our history.” The American proposal presented the country with a choice, he continued: “either the loss of our dignity or the risk of losing a key partner.” Later in the day, Trump confirmed media reports that the U.S. has set a Thanksgiving deadline for Ukraine to accept the proposal. “I’ve had a lot of deadlines,” Trump said on Fox News Radio. “But if things are working well, you tend to extend the deadlines. But Thursday is, we think, an appropriate time.”

Since Zelensky’s February White House meeting, Trump’s roving envoy and close friend Steve Witkoff has worked on the outlines of a peace plan for Ukraine alongside his Russian counterpart Kirill Dmitriev. Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner has also played a substantial role in the process, two people familiar with the plan told us.

The first point in their proposal pledges that “Ukraine’s sovereignty will be confirmed.” But other provisions would impede the nation’s sovereign rights to determine its future. The plan would force Ukraine to withdraw from several cities and large swaths of territory in the Donbas region that Russia has tried and failed to conquer for years. It would limit the size of Ukraine’s army to 600,000 soldiers and foreclose its goal of joining NATO—an ambition enshrined in Article 102 of the Ukrainian constitution. Russia, for its part, would be welcomed back to the international fold as a member in good standing, with its place in the G7 industrialized nations restored and international sanctions lifted.

[Read: Zelensky’s blind spot]

Some of the participants in the Kyiv meeting with Driscoll expressed frustration over the United States’ failure to consult with its NATO allies while drafting the proposal, which directly concerns the future of NATO. When Driscoll was asked why other NATO members hadn’t been consulted on the U.S. proposal, one of the participants told us that he said: “Too many cooks can ruin the meal.”

This high-handed approach to working with the Europeans has long been part of Trump’s strategy for ending the war in Ukraine. His envoy to the peace negotiations, General Keith Kellogg, told a summit of European officials in February that the U.S. would take their interests into account when negotiating with the Russians but would not invite Europeans to participate directly in the talks. “What we don’t want to do is get into a large group discussion,” he told the summit in Munich. “We are trying to end this in a short period of time.”

That has been Trump’s intention all along. On the campaign trail, he promised to end the war in 24 hours. As the effort dragged on for months after his inauguration, he groused privately about both sides, saying that Russian President Vladimir Putin had embarrassed him by continuing to launch brutal attacks against civilians while assuring him that the Kremlin wanted to make peace. Zelensky’s refusal to accept the idea that his country had no chance of victory also frustrated Trump as he sought to add another cease-fire to his case for a Nobel Peace Prize.

In recent months, Trump has shown a willingness to rebuke Moscow’s maximalist demands to end the war. But he was not heavily involved in drafting the new proposal. “Trump is not paying attention to the details,” one outside adviser familiar with the president’s thinking on the conflict told us. “He’s simply tired of the war, of thinking about it and being asked about it. He just wants it done, period.”

During their meeting with Driscoll, some European officials felt that the U.S. position was not set in stone. “He was trying to calm people down,” a senior European diplomat told us of Driscoll. “He was saying very nicely that these are issues for discussion, and we are not pushing something down the Ukrainians’ throats,” the diplomat added. “But the deadline makes it look like they are shoving it down Zelensky’s throat.”