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KYIV, Ukraine — President Trump is expected to announce decisive action on Russia — which could include arming Ukraine with powerful new weapons — as Special Presidential Envoy Keith Kellogg arrived in Kyiv at arguably the height of Moscow’s brutality.
Trump is expected to make a major announcement Monday about Russia’s war on Ukraine, after he already announced Sunday that the US would sell critically needed Patriot air-defense systems to the country.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) on Sunday added that the Monday announcement could include new military aid for Ukraine.
“In the coming days, you’ll see weapons flowing at a record level to help Ukraine defend themselves,” Graham said.
“One of the biggest miscalculations Putin has made is to play Trump. And you just watch, in the coming days and weeks, there’s going to be a massive effort to get Putin to the table.”
As part of the administration’s efforts to end Putin’s war machine, Kellogg is in Ukraine this week for discussions with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and other leaders.
“We discussed the path to peace and what we can practically do together to bring it closer,” Zelensky said of a meeting with Kellogg in a post to X early Monday.
“This includes strengthening Ukraine’s air defense, joint production and procurement of defensive weapons in collaboration with Europe.”
“We hope for US leadership, as it is clear that Moscow will not stop unless its unreasonable ambitions are curbed through strength.”
A retired Army general who served as chief of staff to Trump’s first-term National Security Council, 81-year-old Kellogg arrived in Kyiv on Monday.
A Post reporter was on board with him as he showed no fear when the train pulled away from a station in eastern Poland, bound for the heart of the war — and just
“Eh, we’ll be in a big city. Don’t worry about it,” he told The Post, when asked if he was nervous about entering Ukraine days after Moscow launched its largest drone barrage yet, with more than 700 in a single night.
It’s this stalwart leadership and stoicism that binds both the envoy and his boss.
Kellogg said that in a phone call a day before the trip, Trump said the US must be “strong” in the face of Putin’s increasing savagery and unwillingness to listen to American sensibility, the envoy said.
“I spoke to the president yesterday morning and I said, ‘Hey, sir, I’m not afraid,’” the general said of his trip.
On Sunday night, Trump told reporters he would let Ukraine buy Patriot air-defense systems from the US because Putin “talks nice but then he bombs everybody in the evening.”
But even the big cities in Ukraine have been hammered throughout this nearly 3.5-year-old war — and particularly so within the past week and a half.
What’s more, there remained a good 12 hours before the train would even reach Kyiv. With the skies over Ukraine contested, the only way to the capital is by land.
That means chugging along the train tracks winding through the entirety of western Ukraine — with a brief stop near Lviv, a major city slammed with incessant drone strikes just two days prior in a barrage that included more that 500 drones in one night.
Taking an overnight train meant risking travel during Russia’s favorite time to attack Ukraine. Still, the retired general was undeterred.
“They live with this every day,” he said of Ukrainians who have remained in the country, continuing their lives as the largest war in Europe since WWII rages through their homeland.
As the evening progressed, there was a sense that something may be shifting in the US’ game plan for handling Putin.
While Trump nobly committed the first sixth months of his second term in office to finding a diplomatic end to the war, it has become increasingly clear to the White House that the Russian dictator does not seek peace, officials tell The Post.
Putin also made that evident in a phone call with Trump earlier this month, according to sources familiar with the call.
While the president largely leaned on his diplomats and Special Presidential Envoy Steve Witkoff early on to push Moscow toward peace, Trump took matters into his own hands recently, hoping his longstanding relationship with Putin could sway the dictator to lay down arms.
But when Trump personally asked Putin to agree to a cease-fire — something to which the president successfully got Ukraine to agree roughly four months ago — the Russian president refused, sources familiar with the call told The Post.
Trump has since made his growing frustration with Putin known through multiple recent statements — notably calling him out for “bulls–tting” the American people.
“A lot of people are dying and it should end,” he said July 8. “We get a lot of bulls–t thrown at us by Putin, if you want to know the truth.”
“He’s very nice all the time, but it turns out to be meaningless.”
Kellogg acknowledged the president’s frustration Sunday night, telling The Post that Trump does not stand for being “played” or strung along.
“I think he now realizes that Putin is not a business partner,” he said.
For months, Trump has hinted at Putin being less than genuine in his dealings with Americans — notably revealing in April that it felt as if Russia was “tapping [him] along.”
But recently, his narrative has begun to shift.
“We will send [Ukraine] Patriots, which they desperately need, because Putin really surprised a lot of people,” Trump said of his plans to help Kyiv counter Russia’s refusal to obey calls for a cease-fire. “I don’t like it.”
“We basically are going to send them various pieces of very sophisticated military equipment. They are going to pay us 100% for that, and that’s the way we want it.”
It comes after he described a phone call he had on July 4 with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as having been “strategic” — a call Zelensky described as the “best” he’d had in recent memory.
Then last week, he said he would have an announcement to make on Monday regarding US efforts to end the war.
On Friday, he told a reporter who asked about Moscow’s recent targeting of a Ukrainian maternity hospital that he would be taking action.
“Oh, I know. You’ll be seeing things happen,” he shot back at the reporter.
Kellogg said he looked forward to hearing what Trump would say Monday, but did not disclose whether he knew what was to come.
“There’s a lot more we can do,” he said.
In addition to military aid, the US could also target Russia’s main source of income — oil exports — with a bill pending in Congress that would levy 500% tariffs on any country that purchases it from Moscow.
English (US)