Lt. Gen. (Ret.) Keith Kellogg was nominated on Wednesday by US President-elect Donald Trump as his official White House envoy to facilitate the end to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – leading to a collective sigh of relief from some experts in Kyiv.
Ukraine has been waiting to learn who would be tapped to liaise with its beleaguered government during Trump’s second term after the president-elect campaigned on a platform of ushering a swift end to the Ukraine war. Many have been anxious to know whether the new point person would have experience in the region or pre-existing ideas about how the war might end, as some of Trump’s other recent adviser picks.
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In Kellogg, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky gets a seasoned war veteran and American patriot who appears unlikely to completely abandon US allies or kowtow to Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s demands.
“I am encouraged by Trump’s choice of Gen. Kellogg,” former congressional chief of staff and Republican strategist Steven Moore told Kyiv Post. “He is a former commander of the Special Operations Command in Europe, and he has been to wartime Ukraine [after Russia’s full-scale invasion] so he is quite familiar with the situation at the front and the threat Russia poses.”
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The retired general, 80, served in the 101st Airborne Division during the Vietnam War as an adviser to the Cambodian Army and later as the Commander of Special Operations Command of Europe (SOCEUR), commander during the US invasion of Panama, and a transitional officer in Iraq. He was inside the Pentagon when it was attacked on Sept. 11 and served as former Vice President Mike Pence’s National Security Adviser during Trump’s first term in office.
In comments made to Fox News on Nov. 22, less than a week before Trump named him as the incoming administration’s chief negotiator with Kyiv and Moscow, Kellogg said the US needed to call Russia’s bluff and confront the Putin regime with American resolve, and that as long as hostilities are in progress, US military and political support to Ukraine should be beefed up.
Kellogg’s previous takes on Russia and Ukraine were stronger still. Following a January 2023 visit to Ukraine at the head of a US delegation, Kellogg told Congress that Russia could not be negotiated with and that Ukraine’s only path to security was the defeat of Russia on the battlefield.
“Here is what I think the end game is. I think that evicting the Russians from Ukraine, I think they’ve got the [capability] to do it, the Ukrainians, with their fighting spirit, as long as we give them the kit,” he said at the time.
His plan for ending the war, published in April by the America First Policy Institute, a think tank founded in 2021 to promote former US President Donald Trump’s public policy agenda according to Axios, also emphasized strengthening Ukraine’s position as a means to bolster the US.
“By enabling Ukraine to negotiate from a position of strength while also communicating to Russia the consequences if it fails to abide by future peace talk conditions, the United States could implement a negotiated end-state with terms aligned with US and Ukrainian interests,” he wrote alongside co-author Fred Fleitz, a former National Security Adviser under Trump.
“Part of this negotiated end-state should include provisions in which we establish a long-term security architecture for Ukraine’s defense that focuses on bilateral security defense. Including this in a Russia-Ukraine peace deal offers a path toward long-term peace in the region and a means of preventing future hostilities between the two nations.”
But that does not mean that Zelensky has found the perfect ally in Kellogg. The general’s proposed plan includes making concessions to Russia regarding denying Ukraine membership in NATO in exchange for a more favorable ceasefire deal to end the war.
“There is a pathway forward in Ukraine in which America can keep its own interests prioritized while also playing a role in bringing the largest war in Europe since World War II to an end,” Kellogg wrote. “That role must be through decisive, America First leadership where bold diplomacy paves the way to an end-state. What we should not continue to do is to send arms to a stalemate that Ukraine will eventually find difficult to win.”
The new envoy appears ready to push back against Ukrainian leadership if Kyiv does not fall in line. “The Ukrainian government and the Ukrainian people will have trouble accepting a negotiated peace that does not give them back all of their territory or, at least for now, hold Russia responsible for the carnage it inflicted on Ukraine. Their supporters will also,” Kellogg wrote. “But as Donald Trump said at the CNN town hall in 2023, ‘I want everyone to stop dying.’ That’s our view, too. It is a good first step.”
For experts in Ukraine, seeing that much of Kellogg’s rhetoric aligns with Kyiv is a relief. “Putin was emboldened to invade Ukraine because Biden failed so dramatically in Afghanistan,” Moore said. “Kellogg understands that similarly failing in Ukraine would encourage more aggression by Putin as well as his allies Kim Jong Un, Xi Jinping, Iran and a host of Islamic extremist groups.”
The retired general has one quality that Zelensky should always keep in mind, Moore added. “Perhaps most importantly, Trump trusts him.”
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