U.S. Ukraine Envoy Says Peace Deal “Really Close” as Talks Enter Final Stage

Reuters

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy shakes hands with U.S. Special Envoy for Ukraine Keith Kellogg as they meet in Kyiv, Ukraine 14 July 2025.

U.S. President Donald Trump’s outgoing special envoy for Ukraine has said a deal to end the war is “really close”, with negotiations now hinging on two unresolved issues: the status of the Donbas region and the future of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant.

Speaking at the Reagan National Defense Forum in California, Ambassador Keith Kellogg said efforts to conclude the conflict were in “the last 10 metres”, traditionally the most difficult phase of any negotiation.

Kellogg, a retired lieutenant general who will step down in January, described the scale of losses on both sides as unprecedented for a regional conflict. He said Russia and Ukraine together have suffered more than two million casualties, though neither side releases reliable figures. Both Moscow and Kyiv accuse the other of exaggerating losses.

Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 after years of fighting between Ukrainian forces and Russian-backed separatists in Donetsk and Luhansk. The war has become Europe’s deadliest since the Second World War and has pushed Russia–West relations to their lowest point since the Cold War.

According to Kellogg, the remaining sticking points concern territorial arrangements—particularly the future governance of Donbas—and the status of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Europe’s largest, which remains under Russian control. Under early U.S. draft proposals leaked last month, the plant would be restarted under International Atomic Energy Agency supervision, with electricity distributed equally between Russia and Ukraine.

The leaked documents, reportedly comprising 28 proposals, alarmed Ukrainian and European officials who said they offered too many concessions to Moscow. The Kremlin has since said the proposals now contain 27 points and have been divided into four separate components, though their full contents remain undisclosed.

Russia currently controls around 19.2% of Ukrainian territory, including Crimea, the entire Luhansk region, most of Donetsk, and large parts of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said he held a “long and substantive” call on Saturday with Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner. The Kremlin has said it expects Kushner to play the leading role in shaping a potential settlement.

Source: Reuters



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