President-elect Donald Trump on Wednesday said he will nominate retired Army Lieutenant General Keith Kellogg to serve as assistant to the president and special envoy for Ukraine and Russia.
Kellogg was chief of staff on Trump’s National Security Council during his first administration and was the national security adviser to former Vice President Mike Pence.
“Together, we will secure peace through strength, and make America, and the world, safe again,” Trump said in a statement naming Kellogg as envoy.
Kellogg spoke exclusively with VOA’s Ukrainian service in July about his vision for ending the war in Ukraine, published as part of the book, “An America First Approach to U.S. National Security.” At the time he said he had not presented the plan to Trump nor was he a formal adviser but said the plan would be one option to consider.
He recommended then that the U.S. begin a formal policy "to seek a ceasefire and negotiated settlement of the Ukraine conflict."
"Over time, all conflicts end in some type of negotiation. So you want to make sure that the Ukrainians do not come from a position of weakness, but also from a position of strength. So the question is how to do it? How to put the right components in their places," Kellogg told VOA in July.
The U.S. would continue to arm Ukraine to deter Russia from attacking during or after a deal is reached, under the condition that Kyiv agrees to enter into peace talks with Russia.
To persuade Russia to participate in the negotiations, Kellogg wrote that the U.S. and other NATO partners would delay Ukraine's membership in the alliance for an extended period in exchange for a "comprehensive and verifiable deal with security guarantees."
Under the imagined deal, Ukraine would not be asked to give up its ambition to regain all land seized by Russia, but Kyiv should agree to use diplomatic means only and realize that it might take a long time to regain all of the territories. The strategy proposes partial lifting of sanctions on Russia to encourage the Kremlin to take steps toward peace and establish levies on Russian energy imports to fund Ukraine's reconstruction.
"You either have to find a way to stop the war or you want it to continue with no clear end in sight. ... This does not mean that Ukraine surrenders, it does not mean that they give up territory, nothing like that,” he said in July.
