Trump’s Ukraine envoy has a hard climb to any peace deal
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Retired Lt. General Keith Kellogg is a decorated Vietnam-era veteran who rose to the rank of lieutenant general in the army.
WASHINGTON—President Trump has handed retired Lt. General Keith Kellogg the job of ending the Ukraine war in a hundred days. Almost no one thinks he can do it—especially the Russians.
Rather, they say Kellogg’s role as a special envoy to Ukraine, which comes amid a flurry of such appointments, is an opening gambit in peace talks that Trump is determined to control himself. But dealmaking with Russian President Vladimir Putin will be far more difficult than Trump promised on the campaign trail, when he said he would end the conflict before he took office. That didn’t happen, and on Trump’s inauguration day, Putin signaled that he was in no rush to settle the war in Ukraine.
The goal of any upcoming talks “should not be a brief truce, not some kind of respite for the regrouping of forces and rearmament with a view to a subsequent continuation of the conflict, but a long-term peace based on respect for the legitimate interests of all people, all peoples who live in the region," Putin said in a video released by the Kremlin this week. Trump responded by criticizing Russia’s invasion, saying Putin is “destroying Russia by not making a deal." Asked by a reporter Tuesday whether he would further sanction Russia if Putin refused to negotiate, Trump said “sounds likely." As Trump’s Ukraine envoy, Kellogg will be advising him on negotiations, but it isn’t clear that Trump is seeking much advice. John Bolton, who clashed with Trump while serving as his White House national security adviser in 2018 and 2019, said that he once heard Trump say he liked Kellogg because he
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