War and peace.

Russia's full-scale invasion enters its fifth year.

The war is a brutal, bloody stalemate, and diplomacy appears deadlocked.

Tonight, President Trump's recent envoy to Ukraine takes us inside the administration's strategy for ending the war, explains how we got here, and what's ahead.

Coming up on "Compass Points."

♪ Announcer: Support for "Compass Points" has been provided by... the Judy and Peter Blum Kovler Foundation, Camilla and George Smith, the Dorney Koppel Foundation, the Gruber Family Foundation, and Cap and Margaret Anne Eschenroeder.

Additional support is provided by Friends of the News Hour.

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Thank you.

Once again, from the David M. Rubenstein Studio at WETA in Washington, moderator Nick Schifrin.

Hello, and welcome to "Compass Points".

President Trump famously said on a campaign trail that he would end Russia's war against Ukraine on day one of his return to the White House.

Today, the president is 13 months into his second term, and the war is starting its fifth year.

Ukraine is enduring a relentless bombardment, including against its power system, during a bitterly cold winter, and civilian casualties are at an all-time high.

Here tonight to give us an inside look at the state of the conflict and the negotiations to try and end it is retired Lieutenant General Keith Kellogg.

He was President Trump's special envoy to Ukraine until the end of last year, and he's now co-chair of American Security at the America First Policy Institute.

General Kellogg, thanks very much.

- Welcome to "Compass Points".

- Thank you.

It's good to be here.

Schifrin: Appreciate it.

You often argue that Russia is not winning in Ukraine, and you recently said that Russian President Vladimir Putin is looking for a way out, but he can't psychologically get there.

Why do you think Putin's looking for a way out, and what could that look like?

Well, I think when you look at just the sheer numbers alone, first of all, when I say he can't get his way out of it, he's not winning.

And what I mean by not winning is he's really never gone beyond the land he's got right now.

He hasn't crossed the Dnieper River.

Schifrin: The river that divides Ukraine, basically.

He hasn't got to Kiev.

He's added two new NATO members, both in Finland and Sweden, which they're pretty good.

So his definition of winning is not mine.

Now, and I use this as a data point.

So when the Soviet Union left Afghanistan, they left after losing 18,000.

He suffered between 1.2 and 1.4 million casualties, dead and wounded.

So I think he's got himself to a problem where he can't really get out based on the losses he's taken, the equipment he's taken, and he's driven himself to be a, you know, a regional power, not a full power.

So I think he doesn't want to become a Nicholas II, the last tsar of Russia, where somebody shoots him.

But I think he's worried about the fact that he's had those losses.

The people haven't turned on him yet.

But if you keep sustaining losses like that, eventually you're going to move into the area which we call White Russia, which is west of the Urals.

Schifrin: Yeah.

And then the people are going to start saying, "What's going on here?"

And you start to see the military bloggers right now saying, "What's going on?

"What's our strategy?"

And I think they've reached a point after 4 years of war where their frontline units have been mauled.

They don't have the military capacity to be able to continue the offensive beyond where they've gone.

And it's sort of like a trap.

And he's going to say, "Well, I've got to get a victory.

"If I don't get a victory, "somebody's going to probably try to eliminate me."

Schifrin: There is, of course, the question of how to deal with him, though.

I mean, he is ultimately the single decider when it comes to Russia.

He is in negotiations with the United States right now.

The lead negotiator for President Trump, Steve Witkoff, recently said this about Putin on Fox News.

[Witkoff speaking] "Never been anything other than straight with me."

Is that your assessment of Vladimir Putin?

Well, here's my assessment of Vladimir Putin.

As long as you realize that President Putin was a KGB colonel, the furthest west he was ever, other than trips to Alaska, the station was Dresden, Germany.

And you just have to understand the personality and the understanding of the Slavic and the Russian personality and then kind of say, "Do you really trust a guy like that?"

You know, I keep going back, let's say, back to 1938, when Neville Chamberlain said he trusted Hitler.

Well, history proved that not to be good.

And so the question is, do you really trust a guy like that?

And circle around him.

So I think you have to be... have healthy skepticism about what his objectives are.

And any KGB agent, a good one, would probably tell you one thing and mean something else.

Schifrin: There's a bottom line question, of course, whether Vladimir Putin is even willing to negotiate or willing to agree to some kind of peace deal.

You know, two senior European intelligence officials told reporters at the Munich Security Conference a couple weeks ago that Putin is not negotiating in good faith.

I mean, do you agree?

Is there a deal that Putin would even agree to?

Yeah, I think right now if he's just, you know, if I was advising him to declare victory and go home, you know, because you're not going to give up the land you've got.

But the reason why he wants that part of the Donbas, Donetsk province, [indistinct], is you look at the 3 fortified cities that are still left in defensible terrain.

And I've walked that terrain.

I've been on it.

And it's really the last piece of really defensible terrain before Kharkiv, which is the second city.

Schifrin: Second largest city in Ukraine.

Kellogg: And that gets you to Kiev.

So if you're willing to accept the fact that he's a Jeffersonian Democrat and that this is as far as he's going to go, OK, but history has shown that in real politics that he's probably got a desire to conquer, at least get to Kiev, or make him neutralize it to such a degree that it's kind of like [indistinct] want to have basically a neutral power.

And I really, people don't understand the size, I think, not only of the war, which is the largest war in Europe since... World War II, but Ukraine's a huge country.

And at the end of this, the Ukrainians want to have an army of 800,000.

Think about that.

No army in Europe's that large.

None.

Schifrin: Or as battle-tested.

Kellogg: As battle-tested.

So the new axis for the West will probably stretch through Poland and Ukraine down into Romania, as opposed to where it used to be, which is in the Baltics, the German countries, and France.

So if, you know, your assessment is that Putin still wants to subjugate Ukraine, essentially, and that's the main goal, certainly assessment shared by the Europeans I talked to, many Americans I talked to, you keep talking in public about how Putin is the impediment to progress.

But here's what President Trump said about this on February 13th.

Russia wants to make a deal.

Zelenskyy's going to have to get moving, otherwise he's going to miss a great opportunity.

He has to move.

What should we understand about why, at least it seems to a lot of people, President Trump continues to pressure or blame Zelenskyy and not Vladimir Putin?

Well, I won't speak of the president, but when you look at it, the overtures that are brought back to him are business-related, where you've got Kirill Dmitriev... Schifrin: Head of the Russian sovereign wealth fund, yeah.

And when he starts talking like trillions of dollars are available, which I don't believe, and that kind of sways you to where you're thinking, and, Steve, being a businessman, kind of looks like that.

I take a different approach.

You know, I look at the guy, what he really is, he meaning Putin, where he came from, and that I think he does have ulterior motives, he just can't realize them.

And I think if you come from that perspective, that's where the Europeans come from, is that do we really want to take a chance on this guy?

And I think most of them do.

I was just in Cambridge, UK, last week.

They're not willing to go there, and I don't want to see World War III start.

I don't want to see my grandchildren involved in that.

And we've made mistakes in the past, and I would prefer to err on the side of caution with Putin and just say, "You're going to go as far as you went.

"This is where you're going to be.

"Take it and go home."

Schifrin: You mentioned business deals.

Um, I want to bring up a tweet or a post that you had on X. So this week the US declined to support a UN General Assembly resolution supporting, quote, lasting peace in Ukraine.

US chose to abstain.

And in response, you wrote this.

"Is not 4 years of war enough?

"Is not missing children, "shelling of cities, and the killing of innocents enough?

"It is not a business deal.

It is war."

Why'd you write that?

Well, I believe that.

I mean, we don't, I mean, being a former soldier, you don't approach this fight as just a business deal.

It's a war.

They've invested a lot out of there.

You understand the terrain that's on the ground.

And to get there, and you know, when I was talking about the UN resolution that was passed, it was really a simple resolution.

It was stop the war.

Schifrin: And the General Assembly, no less.

No legal binding at all.

Kellogg: Yeah, I mean, and return the children, the thousands of children.

I said, okay, that sounds like a pretty good idea to me, bring the children back, stop the war.

And so that's the reason it was there.

And there's a reason I said that.

Um... Schifrin: But are you saying that the US team is now approaching this as a business deal rather than international security?

Kellogg: I think they always have.

I think that is an error, that if you approach it that way, there is always an economic aspect to it.

And I think what they have to do is understand just it's a game of wills.

You know, this actually goes back to me, to basically 1958, when there were books written about real politics and real hard, realistic politics.

And I think that's where that's where we're at today.

I think we're back to spheres of influence, and our sphere is currently, the primary one is Latin America.

Schifrin: But when you say that's an error, what's the impact of that error?

What's the impact of approaching these talks in that way rather than the way that you would?

Well, I think you operate as any nation should, operates from strength.

And we're a really good nation.

To me, when you look at the United States, there's one primacy, the United States.

And there's no really second.

And there's third, fourth, fifth, and sixth.

And I think when we operate from that aspect, that there's no other power on earth as strong as we are.

And play your strength.

It's sort of like an American poker game.

If you go all in, the other side doesn't know.

Do you really have the cards or not?

And I think we, the United States, have got the cards to force Putin to say, time for you to go home.

Time to call it a day.

Time to end this war.

Uh... Putin is not going to win this war.

I don't think he's got the wherewithal to do so.

He doesn't have what I would term the legs, the combat power to go much further.

It's a depleted military.

Economically, he's being hammered.

It's a petro-state.

When you look at Ural's oil, it's now trading at $40 a barrel.

Schifrin: Yeah.

- But I think Brent's being traded, which is the benchmark, at $70 a barrel.

It's a real problem for him.

Schifrin: You use the word cards, and I have to, I'm reminded of a moment last year that I have to ask you about.

So like I said, you were in this position until December 31st.

And on February 28th, 2025, the Oval Office hosted a moment that has become so infamous, the word Zelenskyy has really become a warning to other foreign officials who are visiting President Trump.

Let's take a look.

Zelenskyy: During the war, everybody has problems.

Even you, but you have nice ocean, and don't feel now, but you will feel it in the future.

God bless.

Trump: You don't know that.

God bless, God bless, you will not have a war.

Trump: Don't tell us what we're going to feel.

You're not in a good position.

You don't have the cards right now.

With us, you start having cards.

Right now, you don't have your playing cards.

Your playing cards.

You're gambling with the lives of millions of people.

You're gambling with World War III.

You're gambling with World War III.

Schifrin: It's hard to even watch today.

And this is you in the corner right there, highlighted in the Oval Office that day.

What was going through your mind?

Kellogg: Well, we had met with Zelenskyy that morning, and I told him... a couple things I had told him.

You know, one is don't make it a controversial or contentious meeting.

The second, I said, "You know, sir, "I know you like to use English when speaking.

"Use your interpreter."

He goes, "Why?"

I said, "Because it allows you to think before you answer the question."

And he said something that was really telling right there, that confirmed what I said.

He interpreted, when President Trump said "You don't have the cards," he thought it was a card game.

That's not what he was getting at.

So it didn't allow time for you to think your way through what you were going to say.

Schifrin: And Ukrainians told me afterward, he said, "God willing."

He meant God forbid.

He just didn't know the translation quite right.

Kellogg: That's where I said, and I've told him that more than once, "Use your translator as an advantage.

"You don't, you don't, "English is not your primary language.

"It's like your third or fourth language."

And to me, that's a good advice.

He didn't follow virtually any of the advice.

Later that week, I went to Council on Foreign Relations, and I said, "Well, sometimes you need to be hit in the head like a mule with a two-by-four.

And it was almost like he'd get in over his skis.

And it was painful to watch, because everything we had told him to do, he didn't do.

Schifrin: Because it seems to me that you wanted him to succeed.

You wanted him to sign the minerals deal that he was supposed to that day.

He would present himself to the president as how you saw him.

I mean, just the week before that Oval Office meeting, you went to Kiev.

You saw Zelenskyy in his office.

We see it right here.

And after this meeting, you called Zelenskyy a, quote, "embattled and courageous leader."

But what reaction did that statement get from the White House?

Kellogg: Not a very good one.

And let me explain why.

And it's interesting, because I, and I've said to people that he is embattled.

He's been fighting for a long time.

He's courageous, and courageous to define it.

The day of the invasion, he said, "You'll see our face to the Russians.

"You'll see our face, not our back."

And he went on a ride to get out of town.

He said, "I don't need to ride any ammunition."

Is that a man of courage?

He sure is.

When you talk about embattled, I said, you know, here's a guy whose country's at war with an existential fight for his freedom.

I said, "The last time "an American president faced that "was Abraham Lincoln."

And I said, "You don't, we have to understand "where he's at and where he's coming from."

He hasn't left town.

He's willing to fight.

He's willing to do things.

And I had this whole discussion with him.

And what you didn't see, they came in with us.

His team did.

And he ran everybody out of that office when we first met.

It was just he and I. And we spent a considerable amount of time in there.

I know he was tired.

You know, it's one of those, you look at his face and, you know, things like that aid you.

Schifrin: When you said that the White House didn't give you a positive response, I mean, who doesn't want to or who didn't want to see him as a courageous leader?

Well, I think there were people in positions of authority that kind of said that, "Well, you're kind of saying, "you're calling him out, saying, "you know, this is an individual we were skeptical about."

And I said, "No, I'm just being very honest.

"I would have said it to Sam Smith the same way," because I think what you have to understand is you reset the stage.

You reset the equation.

And grudgingly, you get a guy like that involved and you get him and draw him out and you talk to him.

You know, what you didn't see there was that was, the press was in the room.

Schifrin: [indistinct] in the Oval Office.

Kellogg: Right, before that, in the meeting, there was a bilateral, meaning no press.

Schifrin: Alright.

I mean, it went really well.

And then the press came in, and it all started privately with questions from the vicepresident.

Schifrin: Right.

And there was a reporter to my right saying, "Why didn't he wear a suit?"

I said, "Who cares?"

You know, it's one of those, that was his national dress.

He's wearing it.

He came in.

Later, next time he came in, he wore a suit.

And I think the tension started to rise.

And I would have said, you know, "Don't fall for it."

Schifrin: But that skepticism of him seems to have played out in real world life and death consequences.

January 26th, right before that, a meeting, sorry, a US official told me the Pentagon had issued an order to stop weapons being drawn down as it was during the Biden administration and sent to Ukraine.

And then I was told stoppages and slowdowns occurred again, whether from the Department of War or the White House.

March, July, later that month, some of these were stopped within hours or days, you know, including by you and your team.

But overall, what was the impact of all of that skepticism, all of that questioning of Ukraine, Zelenskyy, and the entire effort?

Kellogg: Yeah, I think, and self-serving, meaning we looked at the United States is, and I have to explain, I explained it to people.

I said, "Look, first of all, you have to understand "Stoker's levels of wars."

And for example, let's just use the PAC-3 missile.

Schifrin: The Patriot missile is the most advanced air defense that we have.

So Lockheed Martin is the prime producer of the Patriot missile.

But people don't realize that seeker heads, the PAC-3 Seeker head missile, is made by Boeing.

And they only make 30 of those a month.

They shoot those in a day.

And it's our own fault, meaning the United States' fault.

Because years in the 70s, we had what we used to call a 2.5 war strategy.

You could fight a war in the Pacific, one in the Atlantic, and also .5 left over.

We drew that down to 1.0.

Because of that, the Stoker's levels went down, and companies weren't on a wartime footing.

So we have to make sure we protect ourselves, and the president did that.

When they metered it out, they questioned it, what does it take?

We went back to the unified commander, the centralized commanders out there.

What do you need to prosecute a war plan?

And I think we're saying we're running out of these.

We're running out, for example, let's use the Javelin anti-tank missiles.

People don't realize that assembly line is dead.

It's gone.

So they had to resurrect the Javelin assembly line.

So we have to protect ourselves.

Schifrin: So you're acknowledging the arguments that everybody heard on all sides for years, right?

We only have so much capacity, in terms of missiles, especially air defense anti-tanks, so that we do need to reserve them, whether for the Middle East or Asia, and not send them to Ukraine.

But the other side of this is how to pressure Russia, how to get back to that peace table, you know, that I think everybody wants.

And you said something interesting in Kiev a few months ago.

Recently, you said, "To solve the war, "you're probably going to have to raise your level of risk."

And the example you brought up was Richard Nixon, 1972, Christmas, bombing North Vietnam in order to try and get a diplomatic deal on the table.

So let's talk about pressure moving forward.

For example, should the US send Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine?

Kellogg: Well, I think you don't really have to send them because they've come up with alternatives to do that.

They go with the Flamingo missile.

Schifrin: Their own version.

But I think just the president saying, we're thinking about doing it, we're going to do it, it might change the equation.

But I think the real attack line is economic.

And, and we're doing this, by the way, right now, is attack the shadow fleet.

The shadow fleet carries the illicit oil.

And last week when I was in Europe, I said to them, "Look, "70% of that comes to the Baltics.

"You can shut it down if you want to."

And so I wouldn't say the military equation will change, but the way that President Putin pays his troops and funds the war is through petro.

And when you look at your rolls, the price of the barrel of oil going down, then attack that.

And we keep talking weaponry.

They have a, they, the Russians, have a tremendous ability to suffer.

Schifrin: Yeah.

Kellogg: And it's sort of like in a culture.

These are people who lost millions of people in World War II.

And I said, "Okay, let's attack it differently.

"And if you'll attack it economically, "like with the sanctions, "that the sanctions are going with the shadow fleet, "you can probably do that."

Schifrin: But can the US go further?

I mean, the US has seized Venezuelan tankers, right?

The US has seized North Korean tankers.

Are you saying the US could seize Russian shadow fleet tankers?

Well, yeah.

Well, we've sanctioned them.

And by sanctioning them, you can, it allows you to take them.

Not us, but the allies as well.

Schifrin: Yeah.

And I think that you take that shadow fleet and you take it off the books to do that.

You know, it was interesting.

Secretary Treasurer and I were talking, and he said, when you look at sanctions layered one to 10, one being easy, 10 being hard, we're probably the sixth.

Schifrin: The sixth in terms of what we have or how we're enforcing it?

Kellogg: How we're doing it now.

But he said, but enforcing them were the 3.

Schifrin: Ah, okay.

- So his point was, where do you want to go?

What do you want to do?

And I think the pressure on the economics is good.

You know, for example, Putin pays death benefits.

Schifrin: Yeah.

Kellogg: $200,000 a soldier.

Schifrin: A lot of money.

Kellogg: It's enormous.

Schifrin: I mean, life-changing for families, right?

And you get a [indistinct], you know, in the east of the Urals.

That's a whole life.

So you cut that out.

So that's where economically he's got a problem.

Schifrin: I wonder if you could reflect.

You know, you spent more than 30 years in the military, including one of your jobs was as the top special operations commander in Europe at the end of the Cold War.

This is not quite that old photo, but an old photo of you in uniform.

Kellogg: Almost was, yeah.

Schifrin: And I'm told you're fond of saying versions of this statement.

"I've tried to kill Russians, and they tried to kill me."

Now that you're no longer in the administration, I wonder, is there anyone bringing that perspective?

I don't know.

I mean, you would hope there are.

And I'm not, you know, you think of people like Secretary Rubio and Steve are doing that as well.

And I'm sure there are advisors out there, but who's the president listening to?

But I think you have to have, my comment is, you have to have that person in the room that's willing to tell you no.

That is, I used to have people, when I was in military units, I always found somebody, I said, "I want you, your main job "is to tell me, once I make a decision, "tell me, that's the dumbest thing "I've ever heard."

And they said, "What?"

"And then explain to me why I made a mistake."

But does the president want that?

Oh, the president, I will tell you, from knowing him as long as I have, he really is good at that.

He's got a Socratic way of doing business.

Schifrin: And is there someone doing that for him right now?

I don't know, but when I was there, he had the ability to take that.

Now, you better be ready to take the blowback.

You know, if you're not ready to take the blowback, then you're in the wrong place.

Schifrin: I want to end here by asking you about something you told "The Kyiv Independent."

You said you were leaving the Trump administration because you wanted to spend more time on the outside, "where I could be much more open and free "to talk about Ukraine "than I was inside the government."

We've been talking for 20 minutes here.

What else would you like to say now that perhaps you weren't able to say before?

Kellogg: I think it's more emphasis in saying it, because I've said it, is that you have to ask yourself a question.

Is this just a pure business deal?

Or is this, when you say war, is this something you need to be aware of so we don't have another World War III?

And I don't want my grandkids going to war.

And I grew up, maybe I'm a product of the 70s and 60s, where you grew up in Warsaw Pact.

You learned about the Soviet Union.

And the level of trust, my level of trust isn't real high with them.

And I look at the Ukrainian people from being in there inside, being to Kiev, and being to Arkit, and being to Izmir, whatever, Izium, you look at what they're willing to go through.

And you look at them, and I look to their soldiers.

I've been to hospitals.

I've talked to soldiers out there, and you just take your hat off to them for what they've been able to withstand.

And I think you just need to say to President Putin, "Okay, why don't you just call it a day?

"Call it a day.

"And just freeze in place.

"You go home and do it."

But I don't know if we've done that to him.

Schifrin: You don't know if the US has made that ultimatum.

I mean, I would do it, to say the ultimatum is take it or go home.

And if he doesn't, it's one of those things you could do today, and there's more and more, especially since last week, is the Europeans are taking more of a lead.

And if we don't watch out within... we don't watch out within a year, they're gonna go without us.

Schifrin: Lieutenant General Keith Kellogg, thank you very much.

It's been a pleasure.

That's all the time we have now.

Thank you at home for joining us.

I'm Nick Schifrin.

We'll see you here again next week on "Compass Points".

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