The departing Ukraine envoy for US President Donald Trump stated that a resolution to the Ukraine conflict was “very close” and now hinged on addressing two primary unresolved issues: the future of Ukraine’s Donbas region and the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power facility.
In February 2022, Russia commenced an invasion of Ukraine following eight years of conflict involving Russian-backed separatists and Ukrainian forces in the Donbas, encompassing the Donetsk and Luhansk provinces.
The Ukraine war is the most lethal European conflict since World War II and has generated the most significant confrontation between Russia and the West since the height of the Cold War.
US Special Envoy for Ukraine, Keith Kellogg, set to resign in January, informed the Reagan National Defense Forum that endeavors to resolve the war were in “the last 10 metres,” which he characterized as the most challenging phase.
Kellogg identified the two principal unresolved concerns as the territorial situation, chiefly the future of the Donbas, and the status of Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power facility, the largest in Europe, which is currently under Russian control.
“If we resolve those two issues, I believe the remaining matters will progress satisfactorily,” Kellogg stated on Saturday at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum in Simi Valley, California. “We are nearly there.”
“We are extremely close,” stated Kellogg.
Kellogg, a former lieutenant general with service in Vietnam, Panama, and Iraq, described the magnitude of fatalities and injuries resulting from the Ukraine conflict as “horrific” and unparalleled for a regional war.
Kellogg stated that, collectively, Russia and Ukraine have incurred almost 2 million casualties, encompassing both fatalities and injuries, since the onset of the conflict. Neither Russia nor Ukraine provides reliable casualty figures.
Moscow asserts that Western and Ukrainian assessments exaggerate its casualties. Kyiv asserts that Moscow exaggerates the assessments of Ukrainian casualties.
Russia presently governs 19.2% of Ukraine, encompassing Crimea, taken in 2014, the entirety of Luhansk, over 80% of Donetsk, around 75% of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, as well as portions of the Kharkiv, Sumy, Mykolaiv, and Dnipropetrovsk regions.
A leaked collection of 28 US draft peace offers surfaced last month, causing concern among Ukrainian and European officials who asserted that it acquiesced to Moscow’s principal demands on NATO, Russian dominion over a quarter of Ukraine, and limitations on Ukraine’s military forces.
The Kremlin asserts that the recommendations, now including 27 items, have been divided into four distinct components. The specific contents are not publicly accessible.
According to the first US recommendations, the Zaporizhzhia nuclear facility, with its reactors presently in cold shutdown, would be reactivated under the oversight of the International Atomic Energy Agency, and the generated electricity would be allocated evenly between Russia and Ukraine.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy stated on Saturday that he had a lengthy and “substantive” telephone conversation with Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witzke, and Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner.
The Kremlin announced on Friday that it anticipates Kushner will assume primary responsibility for forging a potential agreement.
