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Envoy Will Visit Ukraine Soon, Trump Confirms As Munich Conference Meetings Are Set

By RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service February 11, 2025

U.S. President Donald Trump said on February 10 that he will speak with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy this week and his special envoy for Ukraine and Russia will go to Ukraine soon as a week of high-level diplomacy related to the Russia-Ukraine war got under way.

Trump did not say when the envoy, Keith Kellogg, would visit Ukraine, but CNN reported the trip would take place next week, while AFP quoted a source in the Ukrainian presidency as saying the visit would take place on February 20.

Kellogg is already expected to meet with Zelenskyy at the Munich Security Conference, which opens on February 14, and the Ukrainian president will meet with Vice President J.D. Vance on the sidelines of the conference, Zelenskyy spokesman Sergiy Nikiforov said.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth also are scheduled to be in Munich.

"We will deliver our expectation to the allies," Kellogg said in an interview with the Associated Press. "When we come back from Munich we want to deliver to the president the options, so when he does get (directly) involved in the peace process, he knows what it will look like for him."

Kellogg said the White House is ironing out details of the highly anticipated talks, which give Trump's top aides their first major opportunity to deliver a message about the new administration's approach to the war.

"Knowing how the process works, it would probably be better for Zelenskyy if we all met together and talked through it as a group," Kellogg said.

In a separate interview, Rubio said that the main issue at the conference will be Russia's war against Ukraine.

"It is in everyone's interest for this war to end, and so obviously we will discuss this with the foreign ministers and other leaders there," Rubio saidin an interview with SiriusXM Patriot.

Trump is pushing for a swift end to the war, while Zelenskyy is calling for solid security guarantees as part of any deal with Russia.

Kyiv fears that any agreement that does not include hard military commitments -- such as NATO membership or the deployment of peacekeeping troops -- will allow the Kremlin time to regroup and rearm for a fresh attack.

Over the weekend Trump said he had spoken to Russia's Vladimir Putin but he declined to specify whether the talks took place before or after he was inaugurated on January 20.

"I've had it. Let's just say I've had it [a conversation with Putin].... And I expect to have many more conversations. We have to get that war ended," Trump said on February 9.

He added that believes there has been progress toward ending the war but declined to elaborate on what he and Putin spoke about.

"If we are talking, I don't want to tell you about the conversations. I do believe we're making progress. We want to stop the Ukraine-Russia war," he added.

The Kremlin said it could neither confirm nor deny whether Putin and Trump had spoken.

Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov told a Moscow news briefing that demands set out by Putin last June remained intact. The terms set out in Putin's June 14 speech are that Ukraine drop its NATO ambitions and withdraw its troops from all the territory of four Ukrainian regions claimed and mostly controlled by Russia.

The "political solution as we envisage it cannot be achieved otherwise than through the full implementation of what was pronounced by President Putin when he spoke to the Russian Foreign Ministry in June," Ryabkov said.

"This is where we are and the sooner U.S., Britain, and others understand it, the better it would be and the closer this desired political solution will be for everyone," Ryabkov said.

A Ukrainian politician reiterated that Kyiv rejects talks between Moscow and Washington taking place without Ukraine's direct participation.

"It's essential to understand that when we talk about the principle of 'nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine,' we mean that decisions shouldn't be made without Ukraine's participation," Oleksandr Merezhko, a Ukrainian deputy and the chair of the parliamentary committee on foreign policy and interparliamentary relations, told RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service.

"Putin doesn't want negotiations, and he wants to decide Ukraine's fate without Ukraine's participation. He hopes that the United States and Russia will agree on Ukraine's fate, and Ukraine will become part of Russia's sphere of influence."

With reporting by Reuters and AFP

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/trump-kellogg-ukraine-zelenskiy- zelenskyy-putin-war-munich-conference/33310441.html

Copyright (c) 2025. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.