Former US envoy: Russia losing war in Ukraine

Former U.S. special envoy for Ukraine and Russia Keith Kellogg has said Moscow is “losing the war, not winning it” and urged Russia to enter negotiations over its war in Ukraine, according to an interview with Fox News.

Kellogg said the Ukrainian military had “performed brilliantly” since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion and argued that Moscow had failed to achieve its strategic objectives.

“Russia is not winning,” Kellogg said, adding that if Moscow were truly succeeding on the battlefield, Russian forces would already be “on the other side of the Dnipro, in Kharkiv, and in Kyiv.”

He added: “They were not winning, but losing.”

According to Kellogg, Ukraine has lost only about 1 per cent of its territory since 2014, despite more than a decade of conflict with Russia-backed forces and Moscow’s full-scale invasion launched in 2022.

The former envoy also said Russian President Vladimir Putin had created the current situation himself, claiming Russia had suffered between 1.2 million and 1.4 million killed and wounded during the war.

By comparison, Kellogg noted that the Soviet Union withdrew from Afghanistan after losing about 18,000 troops, while Russian forces still remain unable to fully capture the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine.

He said Ukrainian defensive positions in Donbas were heavily fortified and warned that abandoning them would allow Russian troops to push deeper into the country “all the way to Kyiv.”

Kellogg also addressed the prospect of peace talks, saying negotiations over the war should involve European countries more actively because the conflict was “primarily a European issue.”

He argued that Moscow should “stop pretending it can take the rest and start negotiating what it can actually hold.”

Kellogg previously called for the creation of a new defence framework to replace NATO, criticising the alliance as “timid” over its approach to Iran and describing Ukraine as a potentially reliable security partner.

In March, Kellogg compared Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy with U.S. President Donald Trump, saying both leaders were “straightforward and tough individuals.”

By Aghakazim Guliyev