"His tool is blackmail' How Ukrainian media reacted to Trump's appointment of Keith Kellogg as Ukraine-Russia envoy

[Emrys]

6. Ukraine's constitution forbids surrendering Ukrainian territory

This proposed "deal" might be able to fudge that by stipulating this wouldn't be a permanent status quo, but would Putin buy into that? In another interview I saw, Kellogg felt that any future negotiations about territorial holdings could only happen once Putin was gone. Kellogg's on record as saying a lot about all this before he was offered the post, so it remains to be seen what survives when he's working for Trump.

Anyway, just this last week, Putin signalled that Russia had no interest in negotiating anything with the USA.

So, by Kellogg's logic, why waste time? Biden and Congress can now proceed with arming Ukraine to the hilt (honouring past commitments would be a good start), on the basis that this would be pursuing Trump's stump "promise" that the conflict would be resolved very quickly, and honouring Biden and Trump's public commitment to a smooth transition.

At the moment, delays in resolving this could work in Ukraine's favour as long as it gets more effective air defences and the weapons and ammunition it's already been promised. Russia is staggering along under sanctions, and that's only going to get worse in the coming year - some predict catastrophically so.

Zelensky has already laid the groundwork for negotiations through international peace conferences in the past year - maybe that framework should be adopted rather than the US and Kellogg taking a leading role?