WASHINGTON — President Trump is prepared to double down on US sanctions for Russia to bring about an end to its war on Ukraine, retired Gen. Keith Kellogg, his special envoy to the conflict, exclusively told The Post this week — but he knows both Kyiv and Moscow will have to make concessions to end the “industrial-sized” killing in Europe’s largest country.
Sanctions enforcement on Russia are “only about a three” on a scale of one to 10 on how painful the economic pressure can be, Kellogg said. The US sanctions themselves — such as those targeting Russia’s lucrative energy sector — are nominally twice as high, but there is still room to ratchet them up.
“You could really increase the sanctions — especially the latest sanctions [targeting oil production and exports,]” he said. “It’s opened the aperture way high to do something.
“And if there’s anybody who understands leverage, it’s President Donald J. Trump, and you can see that with what he’s recently done [in other foreign problem-solving.]”
Last Thursday, Trump gathered his “whole confirmed team” of advisers and cabinet members focused on national security — from Vice President JD Vance to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent — in the Oval Office, where Kellogg said they discussed how to use all elements of national power to end the war.
“Solving the Russia-Ukraine war is really all hands on deck for the entire administration, so a whole-of-government approach,” the general said. “We got the national security team talking about it — the president, vice president, national security adviser, secretaries of State [and] Treasury, National Security Council, working all together.”
Though Kellogg said Ukraine will need to keep up its military pressure on Russia ahead of negotiations, he lambasted former President Biden’s strategy of promising to provide Ukraine aid “as long as it takes, as much as it takes” without cranking up the pressure on other elements of national power.
“That is not a strategy, it’s a bumper sticker,” he said. “At a very high level, I said, OK, [the Biden administration was] really not prosecuting the war or helping out Ukraine as well as they should have … getting Ukraine the necessary arms or strategy that at the right time.
“Working with President Trump, he saw that and and he said early on. I mean, even a year ago when I was on the campaign trail with him, we talked about the demographics, the losses and the absolute scourge of the war, and I said, ‘This is World War II levels of violence,” Kellogg said, noting that’s why Trump is focused on bringing a holistic approach to ending the brutal fighting.
While the president this week has floated possible deal-making with Ukraine over access to its rare earth elements critical to US national security, Kellogg said the president first “wants to stop the killing — just stop it — and then you go from there” on future negotiations.
“I think we have some opportunities, and fortunately, I’m working for the master deals,” Kellogg said. “He wrote ‘The Art of the Deal.’ I wouldn’t put anything past him.”
Still, the goal is to end the violence before negotiating such peace settlement intricacies, because “you can’t kill your way out of this war,” given Russia’s lack of interest in preventing massive losses of its own troops.
“For Russia, this is kind of in their DNA in military operations — basically, you’re in an attrition fight,” he said. “If you look at history, you’d never want to get into an attrition fight with the Russians, because that’s how they fight. They’re used to it. I mean, this is a country that was willing to lose — and did — 700,000 in the Battle of Stalingrad in six months, and they didn’t blink an eye.”
“And so the pressure just can’t be military. You have to put economic pressure, you have to put diplomatic pressure, some type of military pressures and levers that you’re going to use underneath those to make sure [this goes] where we want it to go,” he explained.
Still, the war will not end without some sort of negotiation between Russia and Ukraine, Kellogg said. In recent weeks, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has signaled he may be open to ceding some territory to Russia in exchange for security guarantees — such as NATO membership or nuclear armament.
“Very frankly, both sides in any negotiation have to give; that’s just the way it is in negotiations,” he said. “And that’s where you have to find out, ‘OK, where is this at? What’s acceptable?’”
“Is it gonna be agreeable to everybody? No. Is it gonna be acceptable to everybody? No. But you try to run this balance,” he added.
After a meeting with Zelensky at Trump Tower in September, Trump discussed the reality of bringing Ukraine and Russia to the table, noting that “not only is it time” for a peace agreement — but that an agreement could be made “that’s good for both sides,” Kellogg said.
“You have to approach that in a very pragmatic way, you know? I go back to Teddy Roosevelt and the Treaty of Portsmouth [that ended the Russo-Japanese War in 1905,]” he said. “The czar of Russia and the Japanese were ready to walk out the door [during negotiations] and Roosevelt basically got them together and said, ‘Both of you got to give a little’ and they did.
“And what happens is you get Teddy Roosevelt the Nobel Peace Prize and the war stops. So I think when you look at that, and even more recent examples, that’s just the kind of the way it is.”
