On Wednesday, President-elect Donald Trump tapped retired General Keith Kellogg as his envoy to the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Kellogg advocated for the Joe Biden administration strategy in Ukraine and even called for implementing a no-fly zone over the war-torn country.
“I am very pleased to nominate General Keith Kellogg to serve as Assistant to the President and Special Envoy for Ukraine and Russia. Keith has led a distinguished Military and Business career, including serving in highly sensitive National Security roles in my first Administration,” Trump posted on TruthSocial, adding, “Together, we will secure PEACE THROUGH STRENGTH, and Make America, and the World, SAFE AGAIN!”
While Kellogg served in the first Trump administration, his views on Ukraine are starkly different from what Trump said on the campaign trail. As a candidate, Trump promised, on day one, to end the Ukraine war. Though, he never explained how he would accomplish that ambitious goal.
In March of 2022, in an interview on Fox News, Kellogg suggested that Biden and NATO leadership were wrong to dismiss the idea of a no-fly zone over Ukraine. If implemented, that policy would have required the US to shoot down Russian planes over Ukraine, a major escalation that would have meant direct war with Russia.
A year later, in March of 2023, Kellogg endorsed Biden’s Ukraine policy to Congress. “I believe that if you can defeat a strategic adversary without using any US troops, you are at the acme of professionalism.” He continued, “Because letting Ukraine defeat [Russia] it takes a strategic adversary off the table. And we can focus where we should be focusing against, our primary adversary, which is China.”
In a paper published by the America First Policy Institute in April, Kellogg and coauthor Fred Flietz argue that Putin invaded Ukraine because Biden was not aggressive enough in his approach towards Moscow. Kellogg highlighted Trump’s willingness to kill Russian mercenary troops in Syria in 2018, that he “revitalized the NATO alliance,” and sanctioned the Nord Stream 2 Pipelines as examples of his aggressive policies.
“Trump also had a Russia policy that demonstrated American strength. For example, in 2018, after the Russian mercenary Wagner Group advanced on U.S. bases in Syria, they were met with immediate and decisive action when President Trump authorized punitive airstrikes against them,” they wrote. “Russia never retaliated against the United States over that attack—which reportedly killed hundreds of Russian mercenaries—likely because Putin did not know how Trump would respond.”
Kellogg and Fleitz go on to explain that Biden’s crucial failure in the war was not giving enough support to Kiev at the start of the conflict. “Nevertheless, Ukraine’s counteroffensive against Russia ran out of steam by the fall of 2022 because the United States and its allies failed to provide the country with the weapons it needed to continue the fight to reclaim its territory.” They add, “Biden failed to recognize until it was too late, however, that it was in America’s interests and the interests of global security for the United States to do everything possible short of direct US military involvement to help Ukraine.”
The authors propose no workable plan to end the war as they are only willing to offer the Kremlin a postponement regarding Kiev’s prospective NATO membership. Putin was opposed to Washington’s plans seeking Ukraine’s NATO membership when they were announced in 2008, and it is unlikely that taking the issue off the table for a few decades will appease the Kremlin.
