US Army Lieutenant General Keith Kellogg in an interview with Ukrainian journalist Ramina Eshakzai said that he understands Russian President Vladimir Putin better than the head of the White House, Donald Trump.
At the beginning of 2025, Kellogg was appointed special envoy of the US President for Ukraine and Russia. It is believed that he gravitated towards the position of Kyiv. Already in the spring of that year, Kellogg was actually removed from the negotiation process. He left his post at the end of 2025.
In an interview Eshakzai the general admitted that he would like to remain as special envoy, but, as he believes, his removal was a demand from Moscow, which the White House satisfied.
Kellogg did not elaborate on why he understands Putin better than Trump, noting only that the Russian president “was a KGB officer.” However, he went into detail about today's White House negotiators – special envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff and entrepreneur Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law. According to Kellogg, a veteran of the Vietnam and Persian Gulf wars, Witkoff and Kushner are doing the wrong thing because they have no combat experience.
“I don’t think you can negotiate or try to negotiate if you don’t understand what one of the parties is going through, what that looks like. They had never seen anything like it. This is not their core competency. I think their participation in the negotiations is a mistake. Not because they are bad people. They’re not trained for it,” Kellogg said, noting that he, in turn, would not be able to get into real estate. Both Witkoff and Kushner made fortunes as real estate developers.
Kellogg emphasized that American negotiators did not come to celebrate Ukraine's Independence Day, while he himself visited Kyiv on this occasion. Kellogg emphasized that he arrived as a private citizen, but upon returning to the United States he promised to discuss the Ukrainian issue with Trump.
When asked about the timing of the end of the conflict, the general expressed hope for a cessation of hostilities this year. He also told how, in his opinion, Trump and Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky are similar.
“They have very similar personalities, and they even talk about the same. So it's like two magnets. If you put two magnets opposite each other, they repel each other. And that’s what you see in their relationship,” Kellogg said.
