US special envoy for Ukraine Keith Kellogg, who will step down in January, said at the Reagan National Defense Forum that efforts to resolve the conflict were “in the last ten yards,” which he said are always the hardest. Reuters reports.
According to Kellogg, two key issues still remain unresolved and they concern the territory, especially the future of Donbass, as well as the fate of the Ukrainian nuclear power plant in Zaporizhzhia – the largest in Europe, which is controlled by Russia.
“If we solve those two questions, I think the other things will be solved pretty well,” Kellogg said Saturday at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum in Simi Valley, California. “We are almost there. We are very close indeed,” he added.
Russia currently controls 19.2 percent of Ukraine’s territory, including Crimea, which it annexed in 2014. The territory under its control includes all of Luhansk Oblast, over 80 percent of Donetsk Oblast, approximately 75 percent of Kherson and Zaporozhye Oblasts, and parts of Kharkiv, Sumy, Mykolaiv, and Dnipropetrovsk Oblasts.
Last month, a set of 28 US peace proposals was leaked to the public, raising concerns in Ukraine and Europe. According to the representatives of these countries, the American proposals are subject to Moscow’s main demands regarding NATO, Russian control over a fifth of Ukraine, and the limitation of the Ukrainian army.
The proposals, which Russia says contain 27 points, have been divided into four different parts, according to the Kremlin. Their exact content is not publicly available.
According to the original American proposal, the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant, whose reactors are now in cold shutdown mode, would restart under the supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency, and the electricity produced would be shared equally between Russia and Ukraine, as Reuters points out.
On Saturday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyi reported on the X network about a long telephone conversation with US envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner. He called the phone call important.
“I am now waiting for Rustem Umerov and General Hnatov to give them a detailed report in person. Not everything can be discussed over the phone, so we have to work closely with our teams on ideas and proposals,” the Ukrainian president added.
The Kremlin said on Friday that it expected Kushner to play a major role in working out a possible deal.
According to Kellogg, Russia and Ukraine have over 2 million casualties, including dead and wounded, since the start of the war. However, neither Russia nor Ukraine publish reliable estimates of their losses.
