European leaders are set to meet in South Africa to discuss alternatives to a U.S. plan to end Russia's war in Ukraine as a top Ukrainian delegation prepared for direct talks with Washington.

Members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the Congressional Ukraine Caucus criticized a reported peace plan backed by the Trump administration.

Army Secretary Dan Driscoll told a group of European ambassadors that the continent couldn’t match the Russian defense industry’s output, and the time for settling had arrived.

An American proposal to end the war in Ukraine puts the country in a delicate diplomatic position — caught between placating its most important ally, the United States, and not capitulating to Russia,

The United States and Russia have drawn up a plan to end the bitter fighting in Ukraine, which would require major concessions from Kyiv.

Volodymyr Zelenskiy is scrambling to resist a potentially humiliating peace deal put forward by US officials just as the Ukrainian president faces growing domestic pressure to ditch his most trusted aide in the war against Russia.

"This must be a plan that ensures a real and dignified peace," Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said about the Trump administration's 28-point proposal.

European and other Western leaders meeting on the sidelines of a G20 summit scrambled on Saturday to come up with a coordinated response to U.S. President Donald Trump's demand for Ukraine to accept his peace plan with Russia by Thursday.