US won’t impose peace deal on Zelenskyy, says Trump envoy

Keith Kellogg, US President Donald Trump’s Ukraine envoy, said on Monday that no one would impose a peace deal on Kyiv and that questions about whether Washington would provide guarantees for any future European peacekeepers would be addressed later.

Kellogg is set to arrive in Ukraine on Wednesday for three days of talks that will include a meeting with President Volodymyr Zelensky.

His visit to Kyiv will come after top US officials meet Russian negotiators in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday for the first time since Trump blindsided allies by agreeing to launch peace efforts with Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin.

“The decision by Ukrainians is a Ukrainian decision,” Kellogg told journalists after talks with US allies at NATO headquarters in Brussels.

“Zelenskyy is the elected leader of a sovereign nation and those decisions are his and nobody will impose those on an elected leader of a sovereign nation,” Kellogg said.

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He insisted that his job was to “facilitate” a deal that would “ensure that there are solid security guarantees that Ukraine is a sovereign nation”.

European officials have been shocked by the Trump administration’s moves in recent days to court Russia, which launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine almost three years ago, triggering a barrage of Western sanctions and ostracism.

Washington has sent a questionnaire to European capitals to ask what they could contribute to security guarantees for Kyiv, adding urgency to discussions among European allies on how to respond to changing U.S. policy.

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With inputs from agencies