Keith Kellogg, who was nominated by the US President-elect Donald Trump to be the US special envoy for the Russian-Ukrainian war, believes that Ukraine and Moscow are ready for peace talks.
Kellogg said this on Fox Business.
Asked whether the exhaustion on both sides indicated the possibility of negotiations, Kellogg said: "Absolutely. I think both sides are ready."
“Imagine a cage fight. You have two fighters, and both want to give up. You need a referee to break them up. And I think President Donald Trump can do that. I think he has the vision to do that. I think he has the energy to do that. And I think he actually has both sides that are willing to eventually come together and talk,” Kellogg said.
According to him, Russiaʼs war against Ukraine has turned into a war of attrition, as it was during World War II. The Russians are pouring in a large number of soldiers, and then even more — that is, they are attacks in waves with large-scale casualties. So Kellogg said that Russiaʼs losses during the entire full-scale invasion are 5 times greater than those of Ukraine.
Keith Kellogg will visit Kyiv in January 2025, but will not go to Moscow. He did not specify the details of the visit on the air, but Reuters reported that the meeting will discuss "fact-finding" on behalf of the new Trump administration, not active negotiations.
What are Trumpʼs plans for the war in Ukraine?
During his election campaign, Trump claimed that he could end the war between Russia and Ukraine “in one day”. After the Republican won the US presidential election, the American newspaper The Wall Street Journal wrote that he had not decided exactly how he planned to end Russia’s war against Ukraine.
Some Trump advisers have proposed a model where the United States would provide weapons to the Ukrainians in exchange for Ukraine not joining NATO for 20 years. Under this plan, the front line would be frozen, and both sides would agree to a 1 287-kilometer demilitarized zone. The WSJ noted that all of Trump’s advisers’ plans involve freezing the conflict and temporarily refusing Ukraine from joining the Alliance.
However, according to NBC News, Trumpʼs advisers and Cabinet nominees have yet to present a conceptual or concrete peace plan to Kyiv. Sources note that Trump sees the problem of resolving the war in Russian leader Vladimir Putin.
Previously, Volodymyr Zelensky has repeatedly stressed that Ukraine will defend its integrity and will not cede its territories to Russia. As for NATO, Zelensky considers Ukraineʼs accession to the Alliance a fair "payment" for the fact that the country gave up all its nuclear weapons in 1996. According to him, NATO membership is currently better than any weapons, including nuclear ones.
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