President Trump’s Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff, the New York real estate mogul, has been making headlines for his solo meetings with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Witkoff has said Putin is “not a bad guy” and is “acting in good faith” when it comes to the Russia-Ukraine war, which Putin launched when he invaded Ukraine in February 2022.
Sending a different message is Trump’s Special Envoy for Ukraine, retired U.S. Army Lt. General Keith Kellogg. Kellogg, who served as the National Security Advisor to former Vice President Mike Pence and as Executive Secretary and Chief of Staff of the U.S. National Security Council during the first Trump administration, believes Russia is misrepresenting its position.
As seen below, Kellogg said on Fox News: “Russia’s not winning this war. Russia has not made any major advances in the last year and a half. They haven’t taken the city of Kyiv, the capital, they haven’t pushed to the west of the Dnipro river (which is the major river obstacle), they haven’t taken Odesa.”
President Trump’s Special Envoy Keith Kellogg:
“Russia’s not winning this war. Russia has not made any major advances in the last year and a half. They haven’t taken the city of Kyiv, the capital, they haven’t pushed to the west of the Dnipro river (which is the major river… https://t.co/IMm5uHCwIK pic.twitter.com/FIw5IIRzoF
— Anton Gerashchenko (@Gerashchenko_en) April 29, 2025
Kellogg added: “They’ve lost hundreds of thousands of soldiers and they haven’t really moved anything. It [Russia] moves by meters, not by miles. And the Ukrainians are fighting on their own soil, and they are fighting hard.
“So when Russia says they’re winning – no, they’re not. If they were winning, they would have already won this war… So I think they need to sit back and realize it. I think Ukraine’s in a good position. The Europeans really stepped up.”
Anton Gerashchenko, former Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs of Ukraine, responded to Kellogg’s interview with a clip from Trump’s interview with Glenn Beck, during which the President said: “I don’t believe that Vladimir Putin would be doing this for anybody else but me, a lot of people have said it, too. I think he had the idea of going all the way through, I think he’s willing to make a deal. And I would say, thus far he’s been easier to deal with than Zelenskyy. Thus far.”
(By “doing this” for him, Trump refers to Putin’s purported consideration of a peace deal that annexes only a limited portion of Ukraine, rather than “going all the way through.”)
President Trump:
“I don’t believe that Vladimir Putin would be doing this for anybody else but me, a lot of people have said it, too. I think he had the idea of going all the way through, I think he’s willing to make a deal. And I would say, thus far he’s been easier to deal… pic.twitter.com/wgbHKYIM4n
— Anton Gerashchenko (@Gerashchenko_en) April 29, 2025
Implying that Putin is more agreeable than Zelensky for a good reason, Gerashchenko added to the Trump video: “I wonder whether it has something to do with the different demands towards Russia and Ukraine… Just a thought.”