Like an object floating upward yet still underwater, the bare, vague bones of a peace plan for Ukraine are taking shape. Despite a relative silence in policy announcements on this war from an otherwise vocal Trump administration, the next two weeks may see significant route markers planted in public. Whether they gain any traction with the Kremlin remains unclear.
Last week, US President Donald Trump officially appointed 80-year-old retired Gen. Keith Kellogg as his envoy to Ukraine and Russia. Almost Kellogg’s first act was to announce he would discuss their vision for peace in Ukraine with allies at the Munich Security Conference, on February 14-16. He is then expected, four days later, to visit Kyiv, for his first, long-anticipated trip there, according to Ukrainian state media.
Kellogg’s every utterance is parsed by an anxious Kyiv. He hit back at suggestions that the Munich conference would see the outline of a peace plan revealed publicly, telling Newsmax: “The person who will present the peace plan is the president of the United States, not Keith Kellogg.” Trump will have the potential big reveal, it seems, after Kellogg consults with allies in Germany.
President Donald Trump and President Vladimir Putin.
rump has tried to kickstart the process, it seems in recent days, telling The New York Post Saturday he had spoken to Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin about ending the war, but providing no details.
The Kremlin declined to confirm that call, but spokesman Dmitri Peskov told CNN: “There could be something I don’t know.”
You might expect a complex, diplomatic symphony to strike up to try an end the largest war in Europe since the 1940s. Instead, in public at least, a scrappy version of online karaoke has the players involved struggling to hold together the same tune.
Trump has been surprisingly vocal about the need to end the conflict, but short of public ideas. He floated the idea of meeting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky this week.
Yet no date has been set, and Trump’s comments seemed an off-the-cuff response to a question about whether his ambitious Vice President JD Vance would meet Zelensky in Munich. In truth, we do not know how much is happening in private. The Kremlin has hinted at “intensified” discussions, and US National Security Advisor Mike Waltz has spoken of private efforts.
Unusually, Kellogg’s blueprint for peace has been public since April, providing a stable frame of reference against which to compare any real details of a deal.
In short, it involved Ukraine getting more military aid conditioned on negotiations, and a ceasefire, followed by possible European peacekeepers along the frontlines.
Kellogg has also suggested an initial ceasefire might be time for elections in Ukraine, if any truce can take hold. A putative timetable for any deal appeared in Ukrainian media this week, suggesting a ceasefire around Easter in late April, a peace conference and wider deal in May, but only presidential elections for the country in August. This was also flatly rejected as fake by the presidency. But the leaks, confected or not, will keep coming, as all sides try to float or reject ideas.
It is hard to not interpret a call for elections as a way to have Zelensky slowly step aside, and perhaps offer a sweetener to get the Kremlin to the table. The Ukrainian leader’s animosity is insurmountable toward Putin, whose invasion has laid waste to swathes of Ukraine and allegedly committed war crimes against its citizens. Zelensky and the US president also had a fraught relationship during his first term over Trump’s demand to investigate the Biden family.
Zelensky is now entering a phase where the two most powerful voices in any peace deal don’t share the widespread adulation he has enjoyed from the West for three years.
Talk of elections has sparked unchecked speculation around Kyiv about Zelensky’s future. He has given lengthy interviews in the past week, appearing at times angry and anxious that Ukraine might not be front and center of any talks. In his daily address Thursday he was “sure” there was no official peace plan “yet.” He added: “What is in certain publications, again, I’m sure, maybe I’m wrong, but I’m sure that this is not an official plan of President Trump.” His senior staff have spoken to Kellogg and Waltz in recent days, they have said. But Zelensky is no longer an insurmountable figure.
Leading some polls, in any future Ukrainian presidential election, is Valerii Zaluzhnyi, the military chief Zelensky fired last year. Zalyuzhnii is currently the Ukrainian ambassador to the United Kingdom, and was pictured recently meeting the British Foreign Secretary David Lammy in Kyiv.
Elections in Ukraine are currently delayed as part of martial law, the valid argument for that being that the country – under constant bombardment, with millions of its people physically at war or refugees abroad, and fending off an aggressive neighbor who has vigorously meddled in its votes for two decades – can’t have a free and fair election until there is peace. But an initial ceasefire might provide that calm, and even a chance for Zelensky to step back and provide an opportunity for a fresh face, without the uncomfortable history Ukraine’s current leader has with Trump’s first term, to negotiate a wider deal. Zalzyuzhnii could command the loyalty of Ukraine’s armed forces into a less-than perfect accommodation with Moscow.
But a lot could also go very wrong. Electoral chaos might engender an imperfect or challenged result. More pro-Russian sentiment might make its way onto the ballot, through hacking, or malfeasance. The threat of corruption investigations is leaving many officials concerned about their own fate. It is the sort of mess you would expect in wartime, and why elections could be one complexity too far.
This conflict has defined itself as one of the unexpected. Zelensky has been likened to a modern Winston Churchill, providing the West the spine it did not know it needed.
It would be in keeping with the war’s wild vacillations that he steps aside at Ukraine’s moment of greatest vulnerability.
Another hurdle for peace is whether the Kremlin wants it now, or at all. They are currently winning on the battlefield – not at pace, but they are taking ground. Russian forces appear to have taken the city of Toretsk and may soon capture Pokrovsk, deeper into Ukraine’s Donetsk region. This would also leave them with relatively open ground all the way to the key cities of Dnipro and Zaporizhzhia. It is unclear why Russia would seek to freeze its frontline progress when Ukraine, in the words of one frontline soldier to CNN, “doesn’t have much to say about it.”
This week will see fragments of the private – or spontaneously imagined – plan for peace emerge into the public domain. Each nuance effects the lives of millions of Ukrainians and dictates security in Europe for decades. Even Taiwan is safer if Russia is not emboldened. They can only hope, as the silhouette of a plan drifts toward the surface, that it is as serious as the moment.
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