Trump’s Special Envoy Shed More Light On His Boss’ Ukrainian Peace Plan

Andrew Korybko
Andrew Korybko's Newsletter

Trump will implement a comprehensive economic, diplomatic, and military pressure campaign against Russia if Putin rejects a ceasefire, but it’s unclear whether Trump will coerce Zelensky into territorial concessions first in order to make it easier for Putin to compromise on his prior demands for this.

Trump’s Special Envoy for Ukraine and Russia Keith Kellogg told the New York Post more about how his boss plans to bring Putin to the peace table. According to him, the US might ratchet up its energy-related sanctions on Russia and associated secondary ones on its clients if he refuses. This would occur together with more diplomatic pressure, likely upon China and India to have their leaders convince Putin to reconsider, and “some type of military pressures and levers that you’re going to use underneath those”.

The immediate goal is “to stop the killing — just stop it — and then you go from there”, so in other words, the abovementioned approach would be aimed at getting Russia to agree to a ceasefire. This aligns with what was assessed here in late January about Trump’s plans. The problem though is that Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova confirmed on the same day as Kellogg’s interview that “A temporary ceasefire or, as many say, freezing the conflict, is unacceptable” for Russia.

One day earlier, however, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov suggested that his country’s position on not holding talks with Zelensky due to the Ukrainian leader’s illegitimacy might be reversed for pragmatism’s sake so it’s possible that the aforementioned one about rejecting a ceasefire might be too. That could occur if Trump coerces Zelensky into withdrawing from at least Kursk and Donbass along with declaring that Ukraine won’t join NATO, thus satisfying some of Russia’s goals as recently explained here.

Ukraine would then lift martial law and finally hold its long-delayed elections, which could potentially lead to the US replacing Zelensky like Russia’s foreign spy agency claimed last week is supposedly in the cards. That scenario sequence aligns with Russian and US interests, but it can’t be ruled out that some of the last administration’s Russophobic hawks remain in positions of influence within the US’ “deep state” and end up dissuading Trump from coercing Zelensky into territorial concessions first.