Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg, U.S. special envoy for Ukraine and Russia, arrived in Kyiv on Feb. 19 for talks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Kellogg’s visit to Kyiv comes a day after U.S. and Russian officials met in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, for landmark talks aimed at ending the nearly three-year-old war between Russia and Ukraine.
Ukrainian representatives were not present at the talks in Riyadh.
Speaking to reporters on Feb. 19, Kellogg said the United States understood the need to provide Ukraine with security guarantees against possible future Russian aggression.
Part of his current mission, he said, was to “sit and listen” to Kyiv’s concerns.
In 2022, Russia invaded and effectively annexed large swaths of eastern and southeastern Ukraine, which it now views as Russian Federation territory.
Kellogg said he would share the results of discussions in Kyiv with President Donald Trump and key administration officials to “ensure that we get this one right.”
On Feb. 18, Zelenskyy canceled a planned visit to Riyadh, where U.S. and Russian officials—including the two countries’ top diplomats—had been holding talks.
Later the same day, Trump appeared to dismiss Kyiv’s concerns that Ukrainian officials had not been asked to take part in the discussions.
“Today I heard, ‘Oh, we [Ukraine] weren’t invited’,” Trump told reporters at a press conference at his Mar-a-Lago residence in Palm Beach, Florida. “Well you’ve been there for three years—you should have ended it [the conflict] ... you should have never started it. You could have made a deal.”
When Trump was asked whether he planned to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin before the end of the month, he said, “Probably.”
Trump, who returned to the White House a month ago after the four-year Biden administration, also criticized his predecessor, Joe Biden, for his handling of the conflict.
“I think I have the power to end this war,” Trump said.
He also stressed the need for war-battered Ukraine to hold elections as soon as possible.
“That’s not a Russia thing,” he said. “That’s something coming from me and coming from many other countries also.”
Zelenskyy’s five-year term as president expired last year, after he called off presidential and parliamentary polls originally slated for March 2024.
According to Kyiv, Ukrainian law prohibits elections from being held while the country remains under martial law, which was imposed in the wake of Russia’s invasion in early 2022.
For the past year, Moscow has questioned Zelenskyy’s political legitimacy, saying the issue could affect the eventual signing of a peace treaty between the two countries.
Speaking to reporters on Feb. 19, Zelenskyy warned against attempts to remove him from power in a time of war.
“We saw this disinformation,” Zelenskyy said in remarks cited by the Kyiv Independent. “We understand it comes from Russia.”
Kremlin: Trump–Putin Meeting Imminent
On the same day, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that a face-to-face meeting between Putin and Trump could be held sometime this month.“[The meeting] could take place [at the end of February] or it may not,” Peskov told reporters.
Following the U.S.–Russia talks in Riyadh, Yuri Ushakov, a top Kremlin aide, said a final date for a Trump–Putin meeting had yet to be set, according to Russia’s TASS news agency.
TASS, citing Ushakov, said that a meeting between the two heads of state was unlikely to take place next week.
