President-elect Donald Trump on Wednesday tapped retired Army Lieutenant General Keith Kellogg as his special envoy to Ukraine and Russia.
"Keith has led a distinguished Military and Business career, including serving in highly sensitive National Security roles in my first Administration," Trump wrote on Truth Social. "He was with me right from the beginning! Together, we will secure PEACE THROUGH STRENGTH, and Make America, and the World, SAFE AGAIN!"
Kellogg, 80, served as national security adviser to then-Vice President Mike Pence during Trump's first term. He would play a pivotal role in potential negotiations to end Russia's war against Ukraine in his new position.
Trump's new envoy has sharply criticized the Biden administration's approach to the Ukraine war, writing in April that the White House should have made a deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin in January 2022, shortly before Russia invaded, to "delay Ukraine's admission into NATO for a decade" in exchange for Putin calling off the incursion.
Kellogg made the argument in a paper he coauthored with another former Trump national security official, Fred Fleitz, for the America First Policy Institute.
The paper also said that the Biden administration should have "provided Ukraine with the weapons it needed to expel Russian forces early in the war," and shouldn't have dismissed the option of holding peace talks with Moscow.
It went on to argue that the U.S. should arm Ukraine on the condition that Kyiv agrees to enter peace talks with Moscow.
Ukraine has agreed to several rounds of peace talks since Russian troops invaded in February 2022. The first discussions took place in Belarus four days after Moscow launched its military operation and concluded without agreement.
Kellogg and Fleitz also argued in their paper that the U.S. should condition Ukraine's membership in NATO on a "comprehensive and verifiable deal with security guarantees."
The Ukrainians, for their part, have said for months that they would not agree to a peace deal that hinged on Ukraine surrendering Russian-occupied territory. But with Trump's election this month, Kyiv appears to be placing at least as much emphasis on the guarantee that a ceasefire deal won't be violated.
"Talks should be based on guarantees," Roman Kostenko, chairman of the Ukrainian Parliament's Defense and Intelligence Committee, told The New York Times this month. "For Ukraine, nothing is more important."
Trump, meanwhile, campaigned on the pledge that he would bring the Russia-Ukraine war to an end in a day.
"They're dying, Russians and Ukrainians," Trump said during a May 2023 town hall on CNN. "I want them to stop dying. And I'll have that done—I'll have that done in 24 hours."
"If we had a real president, a president that knew—that was respected by Putin ... he would have never invaded Ukraine," Trump added during his debate with Biden in June.
The president-elect spoke with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky shortly after winning the U.S. election.
Zelensky described the conversation as "excellent," writing on X, formerly Twitter, that they "agreed to maintain close dialogue and advance our cooperation. Strong and unwavering U.S. leadership is vital for the world and for a just peace."
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