Trump angrily confronts Kellogg over praise of Zelensky
At the beginning of his term, President Donald Trump had heated disputes with his future special representative for Ukraine, Keith Kellogg. In the meantime, Trump effectively handed over full control of the Ukrainian issue to Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth.
This information comes from an investigation by The New York Times.
Trump argued with Kelley over Ukraine
According to the Times, on January 26, during a meeting, Trump stated that Ukraine should not join NATO. Kellogg, however, insisted on temporarily suspending accession rather than completely rejecting it.
According to one administration official, Trump abruptly cut Kellogg off with the phrase:
"Russia is mine, not yours".
To which a bewildered Mr. Kellogg replied, "OK, you’re the president."
At one point, Mr. Hegseth chimed in with the recommendation against using the unspent $3.8 billion. "We’re not going to do that right now," the president told him.
"Pete, you’re doing a great job, and you just go ahead and you don’t need me to make decisions," one official recalls the president’s message.
At the Munich Security Conference on February 14, Kellogg, uncertain of his own status, held talks with European partners. According to the New York Times, the atmosphere was tense.
Polish Deputy Prime Minister Radoslaw Sikorski asked directly: "Do we still have an alliance?".
Kellogg tried to reassure the Allies by referring to himself as "your best friend" in the Trump administration.
However, one of Hegseth's supporters interpreted the situation differently when reporting to Washington, accusing Kellogg of "He is holding the line against these isolationists in the administration." According to the publication, this only strengthened the ambassador's status as an outsider.
Tensions escalated after a Fox News segment compared Kellogg's post about Volodymyr Zelensky to Trump's own statements. Kellogg wrote that Zelenskyy "is in a fight and is a courageous leader of a country at war," while Trump publicly called Zelenskyy a "dictator without elections."
According to sources, when Kellogg entered the Oval Office soon after, the president angrily confronted him: "So you call Zelensky embattled and courageous?"
"Sir, he is. It’s an existential fight on Ukrainian soil for his nation’s survival. When was the last time an American president faced that? It was Abraham Lincoln," Mr. Kellogg responded.
Later, when recounting this episode to other advisers, Trump grumbled that Kellogg was an "idiot."
According to Reuters, Keith Kellogg is expected to resign in January 2026.
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