Keith Kellogg, the U.S. special envoy for Ukraine and Russia and a retired lieutenant general, said the United States would "kick Russia's a*s" on the battlefield in the event of an all-out war and urged sustained economic pressure on Moscow to help end the conflict.
Speaking in Kyiv at the Yalta European Strategy (YES) Annual Meeting, Kellogg said Russian President Vladimir Putin's public assessments of his military were overstated and credited Ukrainian forces with blunting Moscow's advantages. "Don't take their statements at face value. They're not as good as Putin says they are," he said, adding that he did not believe Russia retained the capacity to "march towards Berlin, or anywhere else." Kellogg described three lines of attack to end the war — diplomatic, military and economic — and said the diplomatic route had been largely closed while Ukrainian forces had shown they could halt Russian advances.
Kellogg called for tougher economic measures, including seizing sovereign Russian assets and further sanctioning the energy sector to cut Moscow's revenues. "You've got to apply absolute economic pressures," he said. He also argued that Russia was suffering heavy losses in the three-and-a-half-year conflict, asserting that Russian dead and wounded numbered "well over one million," and that those losses had degraded Moscow's ability to carry out large-scale operations.
The envoy's comments came as Russia and Belarus began the Zapad-2025 joint military drills, scheduled to run until Sept. 16, which NATO members have said could be used to rehearse operations against Europe. Moscow has said troops will practice planning the use of nuclear weapons and new nuclear-capable Oreshnik ballistic missiles that Russia has promised to deploy in Belarus. Poland, Lithuania and Latvia have increased their security measures; Poland temporarily closed its border with Belarus for the duration of the exercises.
Kellogg's remarks followed reports earlier in the week that Poland had detected a drone incursion into its airspace, an episode Warsaw described as a deliberate provocation. When asked whether such a violation would constitute a U.S. "red line," Kellogg said it could prompt tougher sanctions. Two days after Kellogg's speech, President Donald Trump told reporters he was "ready to do major sanctions on Russia when all NATO nations have agreed," saying he wanted to deter European reliance on Russian oil.
The Kremlin has denounced Western support for Ukraine, with spokesman Dmitry Peskov saying NATO was "de facto involved in this war" by providing direct and indirect assistance to Kyiv. Russian officials have maintained that the drills respond to NATO activity on Russia's borders.
Kellogg also commented on dealings between Washington and Kyiv, saying the United States had been able to work constructively with Ukrainian leaders while characterizing diplomatic engagement with Moscow as problematic after President Trump's summit with President Putin in Alaska earlier this year. He urged Western allies to continue applying pressure across diplomatic, military and economic channels to alter Moscow's calculus and bring the conflict to an end.