Putin would reject ceasefire plan proposed by Trump’s Ukraine envoy nominee, Kremlin-allied ‘Orthodox oligarch’ tells journalists
Vladimir Putin would likely reject the peace plan that U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for special envoy to Ukraine and Russia has outlined in the past, pro-Kremlin oligarch and Orthodox Christian media tycoon Konstantin Malofeyev told the Financial Times (FT) in an interview published Monday.
“Kellogg comes to Moscow with his plan, we take it and then tell him to screw himself, because we don’t like any of it. That’d be the whole negotiation,” the outlet quoted Malofeyev as saying.
Keith Kellogg, a retired military general whom Trump named as his pick for special envoy for the war last week, proposed a plan earlier this year that would entail the U.S. pressuring both Russia and Ukraine into negotiations by using military aid as a bargaining chip, freezing the conflict along the current front lines, and delaying Ukraine’s possible NATO accession.
In order for talks on ending the war to be “constructive,” Malofeyev told FT, they would have to involve negotiations “not about the future of Ukraine, but the future of Europe and the world.”
The billionaire, a close ally of the Russian president, also said that Trump will only have a chance of ending the war if he revokes Washington’s permission for Ukraine to use American-made long-range weapons, removes Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky from office, and agrees to meet with Putin to “discuss all the issues of the global order at the highest level.”
Additionally, Malofeyev said that Putin’s recent nuclear threats are not bluffs and that Moscow could fire a tactical nuclear weapon if the U.S. continues supporting Ukraine: “There will be a radiation zone nobody will ever go into in our lifetime. And the war will be over.”
