Ukraine to Open Talks With Trump Team on Halting War
Top Zelensky aide arrives in Washington amid uncertainty about Trump’s intentions
WASHINGTON—Ukrainian officials are holding high-level talks with the incoming Trump administration, seeking to narrow wide differences on achieving a settlement of Kyiv’s war with Russia even before President-elect Donald Trump takes office.
A top aide to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is due to meet Wednesday with Keith Kellogg, Trump’s choice as special envoy for Russia and Ukraine, and Mike Waltz, the incoming national security adviser, according to a Trump transition official and several people familiar with the discussions.
Kellogg has signaled support for the Biden administration’s efforts to rush weapons to Ukraine, saying it will give Trump leverage with Moscow in negotiating a settlement. But the Trump team has shown little interest in offering Ukraine membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which Zelensky has said he considers a vital security guarantee against future Russian aggression.
Andriy Yermak, Zelensky’s closest adviser, is visiting Washington to forge relationships with Trump advisers, according to people familiar with the planning. Worn down by waging the nearly three-year war against Russia, Ukraine plans to communicate its readiness for peace.
“But that needs to be a sustainable peace,” said a person familiar with Kyiv’s thinking. “An unstable, temporary peace doesn’t serve U.S. or Ukrainian interests.”
Zelensky has recently signaled Ukraine could agree to a cease-fire if Ukraine were permitted to join NATO. Kyiv would seek to win back Ukrainian territory occupied by Russia through diplomatic pressure, he said, rather than force, as he has long insisted.
Zelensky said NATO membership would need to be offered to unoccupied parts of Ukraine for Kyiv to consider ending what he called the “hot phase of the war.” While Ukraine would continue to claim the whole of its territory, Zelensky suggested in an interview on Sky News last week that Kyiv would seek to “get them back in a diplomatic way.”
Ukraine Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said Tuesday that Kyiv would reject any security guarantees other than NATO membership. “We won’t accept any alternatives, surrogates or substitutes,” Sybiha wrote, in a letter to the 32 members of NATO.
Trump advisers have discussed peace plans that would recognize Russia’s seizure of roughly 20% of Ukrainian territory and that would close the door, for now, on Kyiv’s bid to join NATO.
“The Ukrainians are laying out their maximalist position going into possible talks,” said Lucian Kim, a Ukraine analyst at International Crisis Group, a conflict-resolution organization. “They may, in fact, recognize that NATO membership isn’t right around the corner. But why should they concede that before negotiations have even started?”
Kellogg’s own position on paving the way for talks to halt the war is nuanced. He and another veteran of the first Trump administration proposed suspending U.S. weapons deliveries to Ukraine earlier this year to persuade Kyiv to join peace talks with Russia. This week he said that President Biden’s expediting of arms shipments strengthens Trump’s negotiating position with Moscow.
“The more that the Biden administration does this, it creates a greater opportunity for the president-elect to do what he wants to do,” Kellogg said in an interview on Fox News. “It is all based on leverage. The president understands that, and he’s going to use that to his advantage.”
Trump will face a decision after he takes office on whether to continue U.S. aid to Kyiv. Biden officials have been accelerating arms deliveries to Ukraine, but lack sufficient time before his term ends to expend the full remaining $6.5 billion that is approved for the Pentagon to transfer weapons and equipment from its stocks, officials say.
Russia is ramping up offensives against Ukraine’s stretched defensive lines. With the help of roughly 10,000 North Korean soldiers, Russian troops have retaken roughly half of the territory that Ukraine seized in Russia’s Kursk region. But Moscow hasn’t achieved a breakthrough in Ukraine’s east occupied by Kyiv’s military or in Kursk, despite losing more than 1,000 soldiers a day to injury or death.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has previously ruled out participation in peace talks unless Ukraine submitted to a raft of demands.
Since the expansion of Ukraine’s war with Russia nearly three years ago, Yermak has served as Zelensky’s right hand and will portray Ukraine as a constructive partner for peace, rather than as an obstacle to it, according to people who are familiar with relevant discussions.
That reflects, in part, Kyiv’s bitterness at restrictions on military aid by the Biden administration.
“There is very deep frustration in Kyiv with the outgoing administration,” Kim said. “The incoming Trump administration has given people in Kyiv hope of a breakthrough. What it will look like is the question. But what’s clear is the status quo will end.”
