US official heading Ukraine peace plan has history of empathizing with Russia
A retired US general charged with helping sell the Trump administrationās Ukraine peace plan wrote a string of op-eds and reports for a rightwing thinktank in which he repeatedly questioned whether Ukraine had a legitimate part to play in peace negotiations.
Keith Kellogg also blamed the war on the machinations of a US āmilitary-industrial complexā and ā[Joe] Bidenās national security incompetenceā rather than Russiaās 2022 invasion, which has been condemned across the globe and resulted in a war that has cost hundreds of thousands of lives.
Kellogg has been seen as a hawk on Russia, but he also wrote that āthe US should consider leveraging its military aid to Ukraine to make it contingent on Ukrainian officials agreeing to join peace talks with Russiaā. Earlier this month, after a disastrous Washington DC meeting with the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, on 28 February, US aid to Ukraine was paused, as was intelligence sharing.
Kellogg is also surrounded by some key staff who share a rightwing nationalist world view or have links to far-right populist figures.
After spending the Biden years at the rightwing and Trumpist America First Policy Institute (AFPI), Kellogg took at least two young AFPI staffers with him to assist him as Trumpās presidential special envoy to Russia and Ukraine.
One, Gloria McDonald, is a senior policy adviser to Kellogg after co-authoring several of his AFPI publications, according to her LinkedIn profile. McDonaldās rĆ©sumĆ© contains no foreign policy experience besides her AFPI policy analyst work and two short Trump-era internships at the US embassy in Kyiv, with her second four-month stint coming after Donald Trump fired then ambassador Marie Yovanovitch.
Another ex-AFPI staffer, Zach Bauder, is employed as a special assistant to Kellogg, according to a LinkedIn profile reviewed by the Guardian. He was also a field operative for the chaotic 2022 congressional campaign of the far-right Republican Joe Kent, now Trumpās pick for the National Counterterrorism Center chief.
The Guardian sought to confirm their appointments with the state department. In response, a state department spokesperson wrote that they do not comment on personnel. Emails were also sent to Bauder and McDonaldās presumed state department email addresses requesting comment.
Foreign Agents Registration Act (Fara) documents show that another Kent operative, Matt Braynard, approached Bauder while acting as a lobbyist for the Japanese rightwing populist party SanseitÅ, whose leaderās āconspiracist, anti-globalist worldviewā has included promoting antisemitic and pro-Russian positions.
Braynardās Fara declaration says that Bauder shared his āinterest in meeting with organization leadershipā.
The revelations about the special envoyās pro-Russia writings and the far-right connections of his staff come at a time when the Trump administration has been accused of seeking to hand Russia victory in its war at the expense of Ukraine and other European allies, and when the employment of young, ideological staffers across government agencies has drawn scrutiny.
However, over the last week Russia has reportedly criticized Kellogg and he was recently excluded from high-level talks on ending the war after Moscow said it didnāt want him involved, NBC News reported. Kellogg was absent from two recent diplomatic summits about the war in Saudi Arabia even though the talks came under his remit.
Kelloggās op-eds
Kellogg retired from the US army in 2003 as a lieutenant general. He was a prominent figure in the national security hierarchy of the first Trump administration. In 2017 he was the acting national security adviser in the wake of the departure of Michael Flynn. He was chief of staff for the national security council from Trumpās inauguration until April 2018, and then replaced HR McMaster as the national security adviser, a position he held until the inauguration of Joe Biden.
From 2021 until his recall into the second Trump administration, Kellogg became the chair of the Center for a New American Security at AFPI, a rightwing thinktank founded after Trumpās defeat by prominent figures in his first administration including the policy adviser Brooke Rollins and economic adviser Larry Kudlow.
Described as a āWhite House in waitingā for Trumpās second term, AFPI has supplied at least 11 Trump cabinet secretaries and agency heads, reportedly more than any other organization.
Senior Trump appointments with AFPI ties include the FBI director, Kash Patel, the education secretary, Linda McMahon, and the attorney general, Pam Bondi.
At AFPI, Kellogg articulated what he called an āAmerica firstā foreign policy. Since 2022, that took the form of increasingly strident criticism of US efforts to assist in the defense of Ukraine against Russiaās invasion.
Before the Russian invasion had even commenced, Kellogg wrote that āUkraine is primarily a European issue to solveā, and empathized with Russiaās point of view: āTo Russia, the issue of Ukraine is deeper and more personal. To Russia, it is about their security.ā
Before the invasion, he urged that Ukraine be āarmed to the teethā as a deterrent, but opposed āa no-fly zone and other ways to engage American military forces in the Ukraine conflictā.
After the invasion, Kellogg increasingly reserved his criticisms for the Biden administration, Nato allies and Ukraine, with sympathy withheld from all except Putin and Russia.
In June 2022, in a statement co-written with Fred Fleitz, Kellogg wrote of Bidenās announcement of $1.2bn in aid to Ukraine: āThis newest call for additional aid is a nonstarter and is not in the best interest of the American people.ā
His turn against the administration and US allies was most evident from late 2023, including in reports and opinion articles Kellogg wrote with McDonald, then a senior policy analyst at AFPI.
McDonald was given the AFPI role with scant previous experience, according to her biography at AFPIās website, her LinkedIn profile, and information from public records and data brokers.
In 2018 and 2019, McDonald did summer internships at the US embassy in Kyiv, per her LinkedIn page. In 2017, she did another internship with a Republican congressman, Dave Brat. Her time at AFPI is the only full-time work experience she takes into her apparent appointment as Kelloggās most senior adviser in his efforts to implement Trumpās mooted peace deal.
In one co-written report, the pair argue that the best course of action for the US is to concede any possibility of Ukraineās membership in Nato in advance of peace negotiations.
āIn the case of granting Ukraine NATO membership,ā they write, āthe US eliminates the very incentive that would bring Russia to the negotiating table. By taking this issue off the table in the near term, however, the US offers an incentive for Russia to join peace talks and agree to an end-state.ā
They also specifically criticize the Biden administrationās guarantee that Ukraine would be involved in any negotiations.
āThe Biden Administrationās policy of ānothing about Ukraine, without Ukraineā and arming Ukraine āas long as it takesā has, therefore, only served to remove the urgency of reaching a negotiated end-state to the war.ā
They further recommend withholding arms from Ukraine in order to force it to the negotiating table: āThe US should consider leveraging its military aid to Ukraine to make it contingent on Ukrainian officials agreeing to join peace talks with Russia to negotiate an end state to this conflict.ā
In a co-written opinion article for the rightwing Washington Times website in December 2023, the pair focused on a recent Zelenskyy visit to the US that included meetings with defense contractors.
The pair claimed that this was evidence āour national security policy is being unduly influenced by the interests of the military-industrial complex.ā
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In the piece, they elaborate on this conspiracy narrative about Ukraine and the military-industrial complex: āThe US withdrawal from Afghanistan significantly reduced defense contractorsā profits,ā they write, adding that āthe proxy war in Ukraine, however, not only reignited these defense contracting revenue but also spurred global military spending, which was raised to a historic $2.24 trillion after Russia invaded.ā
In an April 2024 AFPI report written with Fleitz, Kellogg placed the blame for the war largely on Biden, suggesting that his attitude towards Russia was provocative.
āBidenās hostile policy toward Russia not only needlessly made it an enemy of the United States,ā they wrote, ābut it also drove Russia into the arms of China and led to the development of a new Russia-China-Iran-North Korea axis.ā
They wrote: āIt was in Americaās best interests to maintain peace with Putin and not provoke and alienate him with aggressive globalist human rights and pro-democracy campaigns or an effort to promote Ukrainian membership in NATO.ā
They also wrote that Putinās sabre-rattling at the beginning of 2022 should have induced the US to make a deal, writing: āIt was in Americaās interest to make a deal with Putin on Ukraine joining NATO, especially by January 2022 when there were signs that a Russian invasion was imminent.ā
They describe ongoing support of the Ukraine war effort as āexpensive virtue signaling and not a constructive policy to promote peace and global stabilityā.
Kellogg and Fleitz appear to recommend that Russia be allowed to keep any territorial gains, arguing that the US should ācontinue to arm Ukraine and strengthen its defenses to ensure Russia will make no further advances and will not attack again after a cease-fire or peace agreementā.
Again, Kellogg signs off on excluding Ukraine from EU membership, writing: āPresident Biden and other NATO leaders should offer to put off NATO membership for Ukraine for an extended period in exchange for a comprehensive and verifiable peace dealā.
Zach Bauderās role
Along with Kellogg and McDonald, the policy adviser, another staffer, Bauder, has come via the AFPI pipeline.
And although Bauder has less apparent experience in foreign affairs than even McDonald, he does have international connections that appear related to his 2022 field work for a far-right candidateās congressional campaign.
Bauder ā who only graduated from rightwing Hillsdale College last year ā is employed as a special assistant to Kellogg, according to his LinkedIn page.
Besides internships at AFPI and the Austrian Economics Center in Vienna, Bauderās only work experience besides working as an operations coordinator at AFPI in 2023 was field organizing for the failed 2022 congressional campaign of Kent.
The Guardian has previously reported on Kentās far-right political positions and unanswered questions about his campaign finances and employment.
Daily Beast reporting in January 2024 implicated Braynard, a āformer top aideā of Kentās who had āwhite nationalist tiesā in campaign finance issues. A significant proportion of 2022 campaign disbursements went to a company belonging to Braynardās wife.
After being connected with Bauder on Kentās campaign, Braynard apparently tapped the relationship in his lobbying work for SanseitÅ, the far-right populist party in Japan.
Fara rules require lobbyists for foreign entities to lodge declarations that specify not only who they are working for, and how much they are paying, but who they make contact with in the course of pursuing their clientās aims.
A September 2024 Fara filing from Braynard indicates that he had worked as a paid lobbyist for SanseitÅ.
Rob Fahey is an assistant professor in the Waseda Institute for Advanced Study in Shinjuku, Japan, who has written some of the scarce English language research on the far-right party.
In a telephone conversation, he said the party had grown out of āthe anti-vaccine, anti-masking social movementā touched off in Japan by the Covid-19 pandemic. He said that party members were āterminally online, and they are very, very deeply involved in the conspiracy framework that is a core part of the Maga movement as wellā.
Fahey said SanseitÅ was part of the ānew conspiratorial hard right in Japanā whose āmedia diet comes from the American conspiratorial ecosystemā.
Fahey added that SanseitÅ largely āsee the war in Ukraine as through the same lens as American conspiracy theorists: itās Natoās fault, and Nato is part of the new world orderā.
Braynardās filing says that the aim of his lobbying for the group is for them to āwin Japanese electionsā.
On Braynardās account in the Fara declaration, āthe principal, party leader Sohei Kamiya, had planned a trip to the USā.
He continues: āThe principal was interested in appearing on Steve Bannon and Tucker Carlsonās podcast, so I texted the producers of those shows. I also contacted Americans for Tax Reform, Heritage Foundation, and America First Policy Center to ask if they would be interested in meeting with the principal to discuss common, populist conservative policies.ā
In his list of the people he contacted, along with producers for Carlson and Bannon and a Heritage Foundation staffer, Braynard lists Bauder.
The filing said he texted Bauder, described as āformerly and then again more recently staff of America First Policy Institute, but not employed by them at the time I contacted himā.
Following the Oval Office meltdown with Zelenskyy, it has seemed that Trump himself has been calling the shots on a cooling relationship with Ukraine and the other western allies. But he apparently still has the support of his special envoy.
This week, the Guardian reported that Kellogg told a Council on Foreign Relations meeting of the suspension of intelligence sharing that āthey brought it on themselves, the Ukrainians,ā and that it was a punishment akin to āhitting a mule with a two-by-four across the noseā.
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