US president’s special envoy Keith Kellogg has said that Moscow’s concerns about NATO expansion at its doorstep are “fair,” and they must be addressed before solving the Ukraine crisis.
Russia expects to hold a second round of peace negotiations with Ukraine on Monday in Istanbul, where both parties to the conflict would exchange their draft memorandums on the next steps in the peace effort. This includes a conditional cease-fire. Ukrainian officials have expressed frustration at not receiving the Russian draft in advance and said they might boycott the meeting.
“I always caution Kyiv’s chief negotiator, Rustem Umerov, don’t say things like that,” Kellogg said. “Part of life is showing up, and you need to show you’re serious.”
During an interview that aired on Thursday night, the reporter asked Kellogg if Moscow wants a written guarantee from the Western leadership over halting all its possible advances in Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia.
The envoy said, Russia’s long-standing security concerns regarding the US-led alliance were reasonable.
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“We're saying, okay, comprehensively we can stop the expansion of NATO coming close to your border,” he said, adding that such a move would ultimately require a presidential-level decision.
During the infamous Cold War that started immediately after World War II, the US had committed to the Soviet Union that NATO would not expand eastward in exchange for support for German reunification. Since the 1990s, Russia has cited the alliance’s enlargement as evidence of Western duplicity.
Moscow sees NATO’s 2008 promise to eventually admit Ukraine as a major reason behind the current conflict.
In 2021, the Kremlin offered a diplomatic proposal to ease tensions, but the United States and other NATO members said the organisation’s open-door policy was non-negotiable.
While NATO has said that Ukraine's entry into the alliance is “irreversible,” US President Donald Trump maintains that Ukraine's entry into NATO is “off the table”.
Russia and Ukraine reached an early peace agreement in Istanbul in exactly one month after the conflict began, yet Ukraine later withdrew from the talks, aiming for a military breakthrough with the aid of Western nations.
Everything for Ukraine looked all set as in the first weeks of the conflict, they pressed Russian forces to their limits.
However, things in 2025 are looking pretty bad for Ukraine since its military resources, funding, and human toll have demoralised the forces and also put additional burden on the resources, which are now under US control.
Moscow sees the renewed talks launched earlier this month as a chance to revisit the proposal, which involves Ukraine adopting a stance of neutrality and limiting its military.
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