The United States wants Ukraine to hold elections, potentially by the end of the year, especially if Kyiv can agree on a truce with Russia in the coming months, a report by Reuters citing US President Donald Trump’s top Ukraine official.
Keith Kellogg, Trump’s special envoy for Ukraine and Russia, said in an interview that Ukrainian presidential and parliamentary elections, suspended during the war with Russia, “need to be done”.
“Most democratic nations have elections in their time of war. I think it is important they do so,” Kellogg said.
“I think it is good for democracy. That’s the beauty of a solid democracy, you have more than one person potentially running.”
Trump and Kellogg say they are working on a plan to broker a deal in the first several months of the new administration to end the all-out war that erupted with Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.
The pair have only offered a few details about their strategy for ending the deadliest conflict in Europe since World War Two, and they have not offered or revealed when they might unveil such a plan.
The Trump plan is still evolving and no policy decisions have been made, but Kellogg and other White House officials have discussed in recent days pushing Ukraine to agree to elections as part of an initial truce with Russia, two people with knowledge of those conversations and a former U.S. official briefed about the election proposal said.
Trump officials are also debating whether to push for an initial ceasefire before trying to broker a more permanent deal, the two people familiar with the Trump administration discussions said, according to the report.
If presidential elections were to take place in Ukraine, the winner could be responsible for negotiating a longer-term pact with Moscow, the report said.
It is unclear how such a Trump proposal would be accepted in Kyiv even though President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said Ukraine could hold elections this year if the fighting ends and strong security guarantees are in place to deter Russia from renewing hostilities.
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