Trump's Ukraine-Russia envoy slams Kremlin's Christmas Day attack

President-elect Trump’s choice for special envoy to Ukraine and Russia, retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg, slammed the Russian military missile and drone attack on Christmas Day and said the U.S. is “more resolved than ever to bring peace to the region.”

“Christmas should be a time of peace, yet Ukraine was brutally attacked on Christmas Day,” Kellogg wrote Wednesday on social platform X. “Launching large-scale missile and drone attacks on the day of the Lord’s birth is wrong. The world is closely watching actions on both sides. The U.S. is more resolved than ever to bring peace to the region.”

Kellogg's remarks came as Russia’s military hit Ukraine's energy supplies and infrastructure Wednesday. Kremlin’s forces attacked with 78 air and ground missiles and 106 Shahed drones, Ukraine’s air force said. Ukraine’s defense said it intercepted 54 Shahed drones and 59 missiles. 

Not all were intercepted, and some hit targets in multiple Ukrainian cities and caused power outages. One person died in the Dnipropetrovsk region due to the attack while at least six people were injured in the Kharkiv region. 

“Today, Putin deliberately chose Christmas for an attack,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Wednesday. “What could be more inhumane? Over 70 missiles, including ballistic ones, and more than a hundred attack drones. The targets are our energy infrastructure. They continue to fight for a blackout in Ukraine.”

Trump appointed Kellogg, who served on the president-elect’s National Security Council during his first term, in late November. He has called for a ceasefire in the conflict that has been raging since February 2022. 

In his writing, Kellogg argued that any further U.S. military aid to the war-torn country should depend on Ukraine’s willingness to enter peace talks with Russia. He has said that in order to bring Russia to the negotiating table, NATO leaders should delay Kyiv's entrance into the military alliance for an “extended period” in “exchange for a comprehensive and verifiable peace deal with security guarantees.”

Trump has vowed on the campaign trail to end the war in Eastern Europe in one day. He has been critical of the Biden administration’s policy to allow Ukraine to utilize U.S.-supplied weapons to hit inside Russia.

The president-elect met with Zelensky and French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris earlier this month. Trump and Ukraine’s president also met in late September in New York City where they discussed ending the conflict.

Trump said over the weekend that Russia’s President Vladimir Putin showed willingness to meet with the incoming commander in chief to discuss the war. 

“President Putin said that he wants to meet with me as soon as possible,” Trump said at Turning Point’s AmericaFest convention. “So we have to wait for this, but we have to end that war. That war is horrible, horrible.”