In an interview, Kellogg revealed that U.S. leverage would have two fronts. The first is you tell Putin, “He’s got to come to the table and if you don’t come to the table, then we’ll give Ukrainians everything they need to kill you in the field.” And the second is, “We tell the Ukrainians, ‘You’ve got to come to the table, and if you don’t come to the table, support from the United States will dry up.’”
Keith Kellogg now serves as Trump’s special presidential envoy for Ukraine and Russia.
The threat could not have been clearer: continued aid was conditional on Ukraine’s willingness to negotiate an end to the war, and if they were not, then U.S. aid would stop. Knowing that clear conditional, Ukraine’s President, Volodymyr Zelensky, sealed his fate with two sentences.
In the televised February 28 meeting at the White House, U.S. Vice-President J.D. Vance repeated the Trump policy that “the path to peace” is not the path of war, but the path of “engaging in diplomacy.” Zelensky publicly attempted to refute him with the historically revisionist objection that negotiations with Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, is impossible because Putin cannot be trusted not to break the agreements he signs in negotiations. “What kind of diplomacy, JD, you are speaking about?” Zelensky objected. “What do you mean?”
Zelensky rejected negotiations as the path to peace. But willingness to travel that path was the condition for continued aid. “If you don’t come to the table,” the plan said, “support from the United States will dry up.’”
Days later, Zelensky said it again. Asked about a British plan to end the war that included “mak[ing] sure Ukraine is at the bargaining table,” Zelensky again spurned Trump’s goal of a quick negotiated end to the war, replying that “An agreement to end the war is still very, very far away…”
Twice in one key week, Zelensky hesitated to commit to negotiating a quick end to the war and expressed skepticism about negotiating with Putin at all. The American response, as foretold, was to pause aid to Ukraine. Hours after Zelensky’s second comment, on March 3, Trump “directed a ‘pause’ to U.S. assistance to Ukraine.” Citing Zelensky’s second comment, Trump posted, “This is the worst statement that could have been made by Zelenskyy, and America will not put up with it for much longer!”
The pinching of the feeding tube to the Ukrainian armed forces was a pause, not a freeze. Military aid to Ukraine could start to flow again as soon as Trump “determined that Ukraine had demonstrated a good-faith commitment to peace negotiations with Russia.”
Pausing military aid to Ukraine is serious. Ukraine has depended on the supply of American ammunition and weapons – especially the most advanced weapons – and air defense systems. Though Ukraine can manufacture some of its own artillery and drones, and though some of the loss may be made up by Europe and Canada, it is likely not enough, and the most advanced systems cannot be sourced outside of the United States. Ukraine is already losing the war. Loss of U.S. aid would mean losing even more land and losing even more quickly.
As serious as the loss of ammunitions and weapons is, though, perhaps even more serious would be the loss of U.S. intelligence. Ukraine relies on U.S. intelligence and satellites at every step of the war. Ukrainian troops on the front communicate with each other by U.S. satellites. They depend on U.S. intelligence to follow Russian troop movement and to identify and set coordinates for precision strikes on Russian targets, especially longer-range targets.
It was not immediately known if the U.S. pause on military aid would extend as far as intelligence aid. But on March 5, The Financial Times reported that the pause included intelligence sharing. The U.S. has also forbidden the UK from sharing U.S. generated intelligence with Ukraine in an attempt to close avenues of getting around the U.S. pause. That means, among other things, that long-range Storm Shadow missiles supplied to Ukraine by Britain are flying blind, since they require U.S. targeting data.
Several U.S. officials have indicated that the pause on military and intelligence aid can end when Ukraine commits to coming to the table. CIA director John Ratcliffe said that “Trump had a real question about whether President Zelenskyy was committed to the peace process, and he said let’s pause.” But he added that the cause of the pause could “go away,” allowing the U.S. to “work shoulder to shoulder with Ukraine as we have to push back on the aggression that’s there.” National security advisor Mike Waltz also suggested that “If we can nail down these negotiations and move towards these negotiations and put confidence building measures on the table, the President will take a hard look at lifting this pause.”
The Ukrainian armed forces will be weakened by the ban on military aid, and they will be virtually deaf and blind without intelligence aid. That threat seems to have had, at least, some effect. On March 4, Zelensky “reiterate[d] Ukraine’s commitment to peace.” He posted that “Ukraine is ready to come to the negotiating table as soon as possible to bring lasting peace closer.”
Those are the very words Trump wanted to hear. A source “close to the Ukrainian government” told Axios that “the intelligence-sharing pause was the key issue that convinced Zelensky.”
Whether Zelensky’s adjustment will be sufficient to reopen the dam on military and intelligence aid is not yet known. On Sunday, when asked by a reporter if he would consider ending the pause on intelligence sharing, he provided the unexpected update that “We just about have, we really just about have.”
The two questions are whether “nail down these negotiations” means an actual commitment to a date and a place and whether “confidence building measures” have been put “on the table.”
The first has not happened yet; although senior U.S. officials, including Waltz, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff are set to meet senior Ukrainian officials, including Zelensky’s powerful chief of staff, Andriy Yermak on Wednesday in Saudi Arabia.
The second is harder to measure. Zelensky has proposed “the release of prisoners and a truce in the sky… and truce in the sea.” A truce in the sky would include a “ban on missiles, long-ranged drones, bombs on energy and other civilian infrastructure.”
Putin has shown a willingness in the past to carry out prisoner exchanges. Several exchanges have happened in the past, with the most recent being on December 30, 2024 and as recently as February 5, 2025. He has also shown a willingness to mutually stop strikes on energy infrastructure. Both sides were reportedly prepared to agree to cease strikes on the other’s energy and power infrastructure when Russia called the talks off following Ukraine’s incursion into Russia’s Kursk region.
A ban on missiles and long-range drones could be tougher. Russia has a massive advantage in long-range missiles and in bombs that have been altered to give them a longer range. Such an offer might be seen by Russia as more of a neutralizing of their advantage than as a confidence building measure. But how Russia and the U.S. see Zelensky’s new willingness to negotiate remains to be seen.
The Kremlin’s initial response has been cautiously positive. Presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov says that the Kremlin “assesses it positively” but that “there are still nuances that remain unchanged,” particularly that “there is still a legal ban imposed by the Ukrainian president on talks with the Russian side.” However, Zelensky has recently said that he will talk to Putin “if that is the only setup in which we can bring peace to the citizens of Ukraine.”
Having known of Trump’s desire for a quick negotiated end to the war and having known about his intention to leverage arms to achieve that, the pause on aid should not have been a surprise following Zelensky’s declarations of reluctance to talk and skepticism about talking to Putin. The cause of the pause is clear. But that means that what needs to be done to end it is now clear too. And that, hopefully, will lead to negotiations and an end to the war.
Source: AntiWar.
