Donald Trump’s special envoy to Ukraine and Russia has said presidential and parliamentary elections need to be held in Ukraine, especially in the event of a ceasefire.
Keith Kellogg told Reuters in an interview that elections “need to be done,” especially if Kyiv can agree a truce with Russia in the coming months.
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“Most democratic nations have elections in their time of war. I think it is important they do so,” Kellogg said. “I think it is good for democracy. That’s the beauty of a solid democracy, you have more than one person potentially running.”
Trump and Kellogg have both said they are working on a plan to broker a deal in the first several months of the new administration to end Ukraine’s war with Russia but have offered few details about their strategy.
The Trump plan is still evolving and no policy decisions have been made. However, Kellogg and other White House officials have recently discussed pushing Ukraine to agree to elections as part of an initial truce with Russia, two people with knowledge of those conversations and a former US official briefed about the election proposal said.
It is unclear how such a Trump proposal would be greeted in Kyiv. President Volodymyr Zelensky has said Ukraine could hold elections this year if the fighting ends and strong security guarantees are in place to deter Russia from renewing hostilities.
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A senior adviser to Kyiv and a Ukrainian government source said the Trump administration has not yet formally requested Ukraine hold presidential elections by the end of the year.
Zelensky wants Europe and the US involved in Ukraine peace talks.
Officials in Kyiv have pushed back on elections in conversations with Washington in recent months, telling Biden officials that hosting polls at such a volatile moment in Ukraine’s history would divide Ukrainian leaders and potentially invite Russian influence campaigns, the two former US officials said.
Elections overdue
Zelensky’s five-year term was supposed to end in 2024, but presidential and parliamentary polls cannot be held under martial law, which Ukraine imposed in February 2022.
Putin has said publicly he does not think Zelensky is a legitimate leader in the absence of a renewed electoral mandate and that the Ukrainian president does not have the legal right to sign binding documents related to a potential peace deal.
According to the Russian leader, however, Zelensky could take part in negotiations in the meantime but must first revoke a 2022 decree he signed banning talks with Russia for as long as Putin is in charge.
A Ukrainian government source told Reuters Putin was using the election issue as a false excuse to disrupt future negotiations.
“[He] is setting a trap, claiming that if Ukraine doesn’t hold elections, he can later ignore any agreements,” the source said.
A Western official told the news service that Trump would be playing into Putin’s hands by pressuring the Ukrainian president into calling a ballot.
“Trump is reacting, in my view, to [...] Russian feedback,” the official said. “Russia wants to see an end to Zelensky.”
Both sides ‘need to compromise’
In related news, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said “both sides of the conflict will need to make compromises” in order for peace talks to be successful.
Speaking on the Megyn Kelly Show on Jan. 30, Rubio also said it was “dishonest” to suggest Ukraine could defeat Russia and return to the pre-2014 situation.
He said the public had been misled into believing that “Ukraine would be able, not just to defeat Russia, but destroy [Putin], push him all the way back to what the world looked like in 2012 or 2014 before the Russians took Crimea.”
Calling for a prompt resolution to the conflict, Rubio said the US had been “funding a stalemate” that had set Ukraine back a century.
Rubio’s statement was questioned, however, by the publisher of the Ukraine Insider magazine.
Peter Dickinson told TVP World that 100 years was an “arbitrary” figure designed to make news.
“But if Ukraine is able to get a realistic settlement, therefore is able to leverage that into investment, we could see actually Ukraine emerging in the years to come far stronger than it was 10 years ago or 20 years ago as a country,” he said.
“Certainly, in terms of nation building, in terms of where the country is, in terms of national identity, it’s far stronger today, far more united, far more cohesive as a nation than it has been since regaining independence in 1991, and perhaps at any point in its history.”
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