Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is correct to demand that there will be no peace agreement with Russia unless his country is part of the conversation, Kurt Volker, a former U.S. ambassador to NATO and special representative for Ukraine, commented on Newsmax Sunday.
"It's their country," Volker said on Newsmax's "Sunday Report." "It's their lives. It's their people. Of course, they have to be part of that, and that is what the U.S. delegation in Munich has said as well. Gen. Keith Kellogg was there and made very clear that President [Donald] Trump has said so as well."
Zelenskyy, appearing on NBC News' "Meet the Press" Sunday, insisted that he will "never accept any decisions between the United States and Russia about Ukraine. Never. This is the war in Ukraine, against us, and it’s our human losses.”
Volker said that Trump is trying to "jump-start a process" that Russia brought to the table, but still, "everybody knows the only reason there's a war in Ukraine is because Russia is attacking."
The United States has provided help to Ukraine to defend itself, he added, but nobody has gotten Russia to stop its push against Ukraine.
"That's what President Trump is trying to do by reaching out to Putin, sending a team to meet with him in Saudi Arabia," said Volker. "This is going to be coordinated and consulted with Ukraine."
He pointed out that Zelenskyy and Vice President JD Vance have just met win Munich and Kellogg is going there after his NATO meetings Monday.
"There's a lot of coordination there," said Volker. "He's right to say that they need to be there, and of course, they will."
Volker also discussed Vance's speech at the Munich Security Conference, where he presented the Trump administration's goals for ending the war. He also came under fire from Germany for comments stating that he is worried about the threat to Europe and the retreat from "some of its most fundamental values" that it shares with the United States.
"I think he is articulating the kind of political and cultural battle that he has gone through in the United States, and with President Trump, reelection in the United States, going against wokeism, going against refusal to patrol our borders, and so forth," said Volker. "But that means it's a rather domestic-oriented speech in Europe as well. And in Germany at least, they're having elections next weekend.
"It was viewed by a lot of Germans as interfering directly in their politics right before an election."
But Vance, he added, was "articulating the same sort of debate that's going on in Europe about the enfranchisement of people, about far-right populist parties that we have had in the United States and he's urging them to deal with it," said Volker.
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Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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