Retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg, President Trump’s special envoy for Ukraine and Russia, says Ukrainians brought the pause in U.S. intelligence sharing “on themselves.”
It’s “sort of like hitting a mule with a two-by-four across the nose,” Kellogg said of the impact of the intelligence pause on the battlefield. “Got their attention.”
The intelligence the U.S. has been sharing has been critical in helping Ukraine strike Russian military targets, as well as anticipate and block Russian attacks.
“But it’s a pause. It’s not an end,” Kellogg told CBS News chief foreign affairs correspondent Margaret Brennan in an interview at the Council on Foreign Relations Thursday. “But it’s sort of of like, okay, we’re trying to get your attention.”
“That’s a pretty major concession to Russia, to constrain Ukraine’s ability to target and hit Russian forces,” Brennan said, pointing out, “this pressure really seems to be directly impacting, potentially, what they can do on the battlefield.”
“Very candidly, they brought it on themselves,” Kellogg responded, to hisses from the audience.
CIA Director John Ratcliffe acknowledged the intelligence sharing pause Wednesday, a move that followed the contentious White House visit by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy last Friday. The meeting with President Trump was supposed to culminate in the signing of a rare earth minerals deal but instead ended in recrimination, as Zelenskyy sought to remind the president and Vice President JD Vance of the treaties Russian President Vladimir Putin has broken in the past, while Mr. Trump and Vance berated the Ukrainian leader in the Oval Office, accusing him of not saying “thank you” for U.S. military aid.
Though Kellogg indicated that intelligence sharing could resume, he declined to say when. “That’s up to the president of the United States,” he told Brennan.
Kellogg also said the Trump administration would be willing to work with Zelenskyy once the minerals agreement is finalized.
“Sign a document, and then once you sign the document that you want to go forward, that you’re serious about it, then I think you can move forward,” said Kellogg. “When I was in Kyiv two weeks ago, I was very clear to President Zelenskyy — the outcome if we didn’t have a signed agreement.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio is now likely to be the administration official who signs the deal with Ukraine. And next week, on Tuesday or Wednesday, Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff expects to meet with Ukrainian officials in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, he told reporters Thursday.
Witkoff met with Putin for about three and a half hours last month in Russia and returned to the U.S. with “an indication of where the Russians are” on peace negotiations, Kellogg said.
“We want to do the same thing with the Ukrainians, as well,” Kellogg told Brennan.
Notably, Kellogg denied an earlier statement by Witkoff that the Istanbul protocol, drafted shortly after the invasion of Ukraine, could serve as the basis for a peace deal framework between Ukraine and Russia.
The right-leaning Institute for the Study of War describes the Istanbul protocol as “entirely incompatible with the current stated U.S. policy” and argues it “cannot be the basis or guidepost for negotiations that amount to anything other than capitulation to Russia’s pre-war demands.”
The institute noted that a draft of that agreement would have had Ukraine surrender its sovereignty and would have prevented it from maintaining armed forces sufficient to deter a Russian attack.
“Steve said it’s a departure point. I think that’s a good word to use,” said Kellogg. “I don’t believe for all of us that that is an equitable framework. And I think we have to develop something entirely new,” he continued.
“I think Steve made a comment as a general comment, and it is not the Trump administration policy because they haven’t made their policy,” he added.
At this point, Kellogg estimates that the Ukrainians should have enough military aid to continue fighting through the summer.
“They have an ability with the assets they’ve got to continue to prosecute the fight, to do it,” said Kellogg.
Kellogg would not confirm that as part of a peace agreement the U.S. would backstop any European peacekeeping forces by providing security guarantees to Ukraine.
“That’s part of the discussion we’re having with the Europeans as well — when you talk what does [a] backstop look like,” said Kellogg.
“What does that look like on the economic side, what do sanctions look like, what do frozen assets, whatever it’s going to be? And then we also look at the military side as well,” he said.
Beyond bringing the conflict to a close, Kellogg also said president seeks a “reset” of U.S. relations with Russia.
“The need to reset relations with Russia to secure Americans’ vital national interest, and ultimately, to stop U.S. entanglement in an endless proxy war, are the driving reasons why President Trump’s approach and the framing of this war is distinct from the broader, conventional approach that we see publicly to the war,” said Kellogg.
He acknowledged, however, that existing sanctions against Russia need to be enforced more aggressively to be more effective.
If you ranked U.S. sanctions against Russia on a scale of 1 to 7, he said, “the problem is with enforcement, we’re probably at a 3.”
“I think the most important thing is the enforcement of sanctions — not necessarily the sanctions themselves,” he added.