Russia rains missiles on Ukraine after Trump names new envoy to conflict
KYIV – Hours after President-elect Donald Trump selected a new special envoy to tackle a top campaign promise of ending the war between Russia and Ukraine, Russia fired a new barrage of missiles at Ukraine’s power grid, plunging parts of the country back into darkness.
Moscow’s missile attack Thursday morning – which consisted of 199 missiles and drones, according to Ukraine’s military – largely targeted the energy infrastructure in western Ukraine, and at least 1 million people experienced power cuts as a result, according to local officials.
Russia’s almost nightly bombardment has Ukrainians reacting skeptically to Trump’s claims that he intends to bring a prompt end to the nearly 3-year-old full-scale war once he takes office. There was, however, a degree of cautious optimism to his naming of retired Army Gen. Keith Kellogg as special envoy for Ukraine and Russia because of the general’s past expressions of support for Kyiv.
Kellogg argued in a Fox News interview last week that President Joe Biden’s recent approval for Ukraine to use U.S.-provided longer-range missiles for deeper strikes into Russia – something Biden had denied Ukraine for months despite its pleas – was a positive development and has “actually given Trump more leverage.”
Tymofiy Mylovanov, a former economic minister and head of the Kyiv School of Economics, said on X that “Ukrainians respond positively so far” and noted that Kellogg expressed support for arming the country after he last visited.
But other public proposals by Kellogg, including one published in April, advocating cease-fire negotiations that would see Ukraine agree to not join NATO for the foreseeable future and give up trying to militarily regain its occupied land, have been rejected by Ukraine.
Mustafa Nayyem, a Ukrainian lawmaker, said Kellogg’s proposed plan, which he expects will be revised, “already raises significant concerns. The concessions to Russia on which it is based merely encourage further aggression and increase the risk of new violations.”
Trump has largely declined to provide details on his strategy for winding down the war, and some Ukrainian officials monitored his earlier campaign rhetoric with concern that he would be too deferential to Russia in any peace negotiations. Kellogg was chief of staff for the National Security Council during Trump’s first term.
Less than a month after Trump’s election, Ukrainian officials have closely monitored Trump’s picks for his Cabinet for a sense of how he might handle the war. Though people in Kyiv were critical of Trump’s messaging about Ukraine during his campaign, officials were privately optimistic that Trump’s unpredictability once elected would be a welcome change from Biden’s cautious strategy toward parceling out U.S. assistance.
Some Ukrainians, including officials, also hit back Thursday at the Biden administration for a suggestion that Kyiv should lower its minimum draft age to 18 to mobilize more men to fight. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy approved lowering the conscription age to 25 this year, but he and other lawmakers have resisted reducing it further because Ukraine risks a demographic crisis if too many of its young men are military casualties.
Influential activist and military volunteer Maria Berlinska wrote on Facebook that she was against the call to mobilize younger men. She has previously called for Ukraine to draft women, which the country is not doing.
“Ukraine has been losing its best, strongest and most motivated people,” she said. “Sending yesterday’s schoolchildren to the front – those who haven’t yet seen life – is both unwise and unjust.”
Zelenskyy communications adviser Dmytro Lytvyn wrote on X: “It doesn’t make sense to see calls for Ukraine to lower the (mobilization) age, presumably in order to draft more people, when we can see that previously announced equipment is not arriving on time. Because of these delays, Ukraine lacks weapons to equip already mobilized soldiers.”
The transition between U.S. presidential administrations comes at a precarious time for Ukraine, whose soldiers are exhausted trying to contain months’ worth of Moscow’s advances along the eastern front. Russia’s gains, which coincided with Kyiv’s surprise offensive to occupy Russia’s western Kursk region, have led to some of the most rapid territorial losses Ukraine has experienced since 2022, analysts have said.
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Serhiy Morgunov contributed to this report.