Trump’s Ukraine Envoy Has a Hard Climb to Any Peace Deal

WASHINGTON—President Trump has handed retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg the job of ending the Ukraine war in 100 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 coming 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 “never offers his opinion unless I ask for it.”

Kellogg described himself as a stalwart Trump supporter in 2015, when he said he got into Trump’s good graces by contacting him at Trump Tower and volunteering as an unpaid adviser. He served for four years in Trump’s White House on the National Security Council where colleagues say he was a constant fixture in the Oval Office, often listening to conversations but seldom partaking in them.

Like some of Trump’s other special envoys, he appears to have been named despite a lack of relevant expertise. Kellogg’s past military experience could be important to the president as he weighs the consequences of extending or withholding aid to Ukraine, former colleagues say.

But he has never served as a diplomat, and if his experience in the White House is any indication, he won’t partake in any real negotiations with Russia, his former colleagues say.

“Trump enjoys his company and sees him as a fiercely loyal guy, but he has never exerted any kind of meaningful policy influence,” said one former National Security Council staffer who worked with him in the Trump administration. “He’s certainly not going to come up with anything that deviates from where Trump’s head is.”

Kellogg, a decorated Vietnam-era veteran who rose to become a lieutenant general in the army, has lately been publicly buttressing the notion that Ukraine can make battlefield gains against Russia with U.S. assistance. He has praised the Biden administration’s decision to give more potent weapons to Ukraine, saying it gives Trump leverage in coming talks, and suggested that more weaponry to Ukraine might be used as a cudgel to get Moscow to negotiate.

Russia, meanwhile, has expressed no interest in engaging Kellogg. The Kremlin has suggested that chemistry between Trump and Putin could lead to better relations with the U.S. under a Trump presidency, but it has also inferred that Trump might fall under the spell of America’s dreaded deep state that he was elected under a promise to uproot.

Both Trump and the Kremlin have denied speaking personally for months, but have promised to do so soon.

Bolton fears Trump in coming talks could force Kyiv into ruinous concessions to Moscow “because I think Putin knows how to play Trump,” and Kellogg is unlikely to serve as a check against Putin’s influence. “He’ll simply do what Trump tells him to do,” Bolton said of Kellogg. “He might protest briefly, but Trump didn’t pick Kellogg for his independent judgment.”

Former colleagues of Kellogg say that he was appointed as Ukraine envoy on the back of a proposed peace plan that he co-wrote last year that was deeply critical of the Biden administration, blaming it for slow-rolling military aid and simultaneously provoking Moscow by drawing Kyiv toward membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

The plan, published by the pro-Trump think tank America First Policy Institute, called for a cease-fire and a negotiated settlement, using carrots and sticks to get the Russians and the Ukrainians to negotiate.

In a concession to Russia, the plan advised NATO to hold off on accepting Ukraine into its alliance, and offer Russia some sanctions relief in return for it signing a peace agreement. The plan also threatened a cutoff of military aid to Kyiv if the government there didn’t pursue peace talks.

In Moscow, Kremlin officials have derided the road map as a nonstarter, and the Kremlin-controlled tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda called the plan a combination of “gingerbread and whips,” neither of which scared or enticed the Russian side much. The paper also lashed out at Kellogg, calling him a Cold War relic of the U.S. military-industrial complex.

“He is Pentagon flesh and blood. Republican flesh and blood. And he loves money,” the tabloid opined last month.

Russian commentators have suggested that Kellogg’s fealty to Ukraine, and hostility toward Russia, might even run in the family. His daughter, Meaghan Mobbs, is a retired career military officer and president of a nongovernment organization that ferries humanitarian aid into Ukraine from a logistics hub in Romania.

Russia’s state-run Tass news agency noted that the NGO, the Weatherman Foundation, has repatriated dead American volunteers killed in Ukraine, and once arranged a visit of Kellogg to Ukraine “after which he called on the Senate to send immediate lethal aid to Kyiv. That means there is clearly no hint of impartiality.”

Seth Jones, a political scientist and defense expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, called Kellogg a serious thinker whose presence in Trump’s orbit is meant to give heft to White House decision-making on Ukraine. But he said the Kremlin’s personal attacks on Kellogg and his plan bode ill for any deal.

“The negotiations haven’t even started yet, and they’re already going after the lead American involved in this,” he said. “That does not sound auspicious for a negotiation or even a cease-fire.”