Can Trump’s Team Broker Peace In Ukraine As Moscow Seeks ‘Radical Changes’?

US President Donald Trump’s outgoing Ukraine envoy, Keith Kellogg, has suggested that a potential deal to end the ongoing war in Ukraine is “really close,” hinging on the resolution of just two major issues. Speaking at the Reagan National Defense Forum, Kellogg said that negotiations were in the “last 10 metres,” a stage he described as the hardest part of any diplomatic effort. 

However, the Kremlin has indicated that several of the U.S. proposals would require radical changes before any agreement could be reached. Trump, who has frequently described himself as a “peacemaker” president, has acknowledged that resolving Europe’s deadliest conflict since World War Two has remained one of the most challenging and elusive goals of his foreign policy. 

The war began in February 2022, following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine after years of conflict between Russian-backed separatists and Ukrainian forces in the Donbas region, comprising Donetsk and Luhansk.

The two main outstanding issues, Kellogg said, were on territory – primarily the future of the Donbas – and the future of Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Europe’s largest, which is under Russian control.

“If we get those two issues settled, I think the rest of the things will work out fairly well,” Kellogg said on Saturday at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum in Simi Valley, California. “We’re almost there.”

“We’re really, really close,” said Kellogg.

After President Vladimir Putin held four hours of Kremlin talks last week with Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, and Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, Putin’s top foreign policy aide, Yuri Ushakov, said “territorial problems” were discussed.

That is Kremlin shorthand for Russian claims to the whole of Donbas, though Ukraine is still in control of at least 5,000 square km (1,900 square miles) of the area. Almost all countries recognise Donbas as part of Ukraine.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said that handing over the rest of Donetsk would be illegal without a referendum and would give Russia a platform to launch assaults deeper into Ukraine in the future.

Ushakov was quoted by Russian media on Sunday as saying that the United States would have to “make serious, I would say, radical changes to their papers” on Ukraine. He did not clarify what changes Moscow wanted Washington to make.

Zelenskiy said on Saturday that he had had a long and “substantive” phone call with Witkoff and Kushner. The Kremlin has said it expects Kushner to be doing the main work on drafting a possible deal.

Kellogg, a retired lieutenant general who served in Vietnam, Panama and Iraq, said the scale of the death and injuries caused by the Ukraine war was “horrific” and unprecedented in terms of a regional war.

Kellogg said that, together, Russia and Ukraine have suffered more than 2 million casualties, including dead and wounded since the war began. Neither Russia nor Ukraine disclose credible estimates of their losses.

Russia currently controls 19.2% of Ukraine, including Crimea, which it annexed in 2014, all of Luhansk, more than 80% of Donetsk, about 75% of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, and slivers of the Kharkiv, Sumy, Mykolaiv and Dnipropetrovsk regions.

A leaked set of 28 U.S. draft peace proposals emerged last month, alarming Ukrainian and European officials who said it bowed to Moscow’s main demands on NATO, Russian control of a fifth of Ukraine and restrictions on Ukraine’s army.

(With Reuters Inputs)

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