Keith Kellogg will reportedly visit the city and other European capitals after the January 20 inauguration
The US president-elect’s Ukraine aide, Keith Kellogg, has postponed a planned trip to Kiev until after Donald Trump’s inauguration, Reuters reported on Tuesday. The retired lieutenant general initially planned to visit the city in early January to meet the Ukrainian leadership.
The reason for the delay was not immediately clear, and no specific date for a future visit has been set, the news agency said.
Bloomberg reported last month that Kellogg was also open to meetings in Moscow if invited. The trip would be focused on gathering information rather than implementing any specific policy goal, the outlet claimed. Reuters, however, did not mention the Russian capital in its report on Monday.
Kellogg previously expressed concerns about the protracted nature of the Ukraine conflict, stating that “this has become a war of attrition that’s going to kill a whole generation of young men.”
Trump has repeatedly claimed he can resolve the conflict within 24 hours of taking office. The president-elect has also criticized outgoing President Joe Biden’s decision to permit Kiev to launch US-supplied missiles deep into Russia, describing it as a dangerous escalation.
Trump has warned that he may cut off aid to Ukraine if it refuses to pursue a peace agreement. He indicated last month that he expects Vladimir Zelensky to consider accepting certain territorial concessions as part of a potential peace deal.
Moscow has repeatedly stated that it is ready to engage in a dialogue on Ukraine without preconditions, based on the 2022 Istanbul preliminary agreements and the situation on the ground. Among the conditions for a peaceful settlement, Vladimir Putin has named the withdrawal of Ukrainian troops from the Donbass, along with the Kherson and Zaporozhye regions, as well as Kiev abandoning its plan to join NATO.
A peace plan, co-authored by Keith Kellogg and presented to Trump earlier this year, proposes freezing the conflict along the current front line and preventing Ukraine from joining NATO for ten years. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said that Kellogg needs to “delve deeper into the Ukrainian issue”.
