Ukraine has already agreed it will “de facto” concede land held by Russia for a ceasefire and peace process, President Donald Trump’s Special Envoy has said.
President Donald Trump’s Special Envoy to Ukraine the retired General Keith Kellogg has said the United States will not now — as previously warned — be stepping away from the negotiating table between Ukraine and Russia as the signals coming out of Kyiv are “very, very good” and Ukraine has now agreed to concede land held by Russia for peace.
The comments came just as the United States and Ukraine signed President Trump’s rare earths deal, hailed as an ‘important milestone’ on the road to achieving peace in the region, given it gives the U.S. a long-term interest in the security of Ukraine.
Speaking to Fox News on Wednesday evening, Kellogg related that progress had been made in his visit to London last week to speak with Ukraine and its European backers, saying Kyiv had now agreed to “22 concrete terms”.
Reflecting on the importance of stopping the fighting with a ceasefire to create breathing-room for fruitful negotiations on a permanent peace, Kellogg said: “people don’t understand how violent this war has been. Soldiers alone, when you combine the Ukrainian and Russian soldiers killed and wounded, we’re at 1.2 million. That’s an unheard-of number. We only had in eight years of war in Vietnam 68,000 killed.”
On what Ukraine is willing to do to get to that point of talks, Kellogg revealed that Ukraine had apparently agreed to cross one of its most important red lines, that any sort of conceding of territory to Russia would be utterly unacceptable. While completely understandable that a country would wish to retain its territory, dogged insistence on this point essentially made any sort of peace talks impossible as the only possible outcomes are either total Russian defeat, or total Russian victory.
General Kellogg said of this development: “The Ukrainians have already said they are willing to give up the land the Russians — not de jure, forever, but de facto because the Russians actually occupy that land — they’ve agreed to that land, they know you have a ceasefire in place where you sit on the land you currently hold. That’s what they’re willing to go to, that’s what they told me last week… [a] ceasefire in place, you have your lines set, and they’re willing to go there…”.
Meanwhile, both Ukraine and Russia continue to accuse each other of strikes on civilians, while insisting their own only target the military. The latest such incident was overnight, with nine killed nationwide in both Ukrainian-controlled Ukraine and Russian-occupied zones in a mutual exchange of fire.
These killings — deliberately of civilians or not, depending on perspective — fuel accusations by both sides that the other is not truly ready for peace. Head of President Volodymyr Zelensky’s presidential office Andriy Yermak made just such a point on Thursday morning, saying Russia does not want peace but only breathing space to regroup its forces and to fight again harder in the future.
He said: “Today, Putin is betting on Western fatigue. He wants to ‘freeze’ the war – not end it. And that is why any ‘truce’ without guarantees and justice would only open the door to new aggression. Easing sanctions, concessions or negotiations on the Kremlin’s terms is a trap. You cannot simultaneously talk about peace and arm yourself for a new attack… Moscow has not changed its goals. On the contrary, the Russian Federation is exploiting diplomatic talks to buy time, regroup, circumvent sanctions, and continue the war at a time of its own choosing.”
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