{"id":315697,"date":"2025-09-23T05:45:16","date_gmt":"2025-09-23T05:45:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=315697"},"modified":"2025-09-24T07:54:39","modified_gmt":"2025-09-24T07:54:39","slug":"russia-is-losing-its-war-on-ukraine-joint-staff-chairman-envoy-tell-trump-wed-kick-their-ass","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=315697","title":{"rendered":"Russia is \u2018losing\u2019 its war on Ukraine, Joint Staff chairman, envoy tell Trump: \u2018We\u2019d kick their ass\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Caitlin Doombos \u2013 New York Post Sept 15, 2025<\/strong><\/h1>\n

Special Presidential Envoy Keith Kellogg on Monday said he and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff recently advised President Trump that Russia is losing its war on Ukraine<\/a> \u2014 as Moscow has seen more than 1 million casualties while taking less than 1% of Ukrainian territory since November 2022.<\/p>\n

Speaking at the Yalta European Security Conference in Kyiv, Kellogg revealed he and the chairman, Air Force Gen. Dan Caine, each reassured the president of Moscow\u2019s wilting position roughly six weeks ago \u2014 shortly before Trump\u2019s meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf Putin thinks Russia is winning, his definition of winning and my definition of winning are absolutely two different things,\u201d Kellogg said. \u201cIf he was winning, he\u2019d be in Kyiv<\/a>. If he\u2019s winning, he\u2019d be west of the Dnipro River. If he was winning, he\u2019d be on Odessa. If he was winning, he would have changed the government.<\/p>\n

\u201cRussia is, in fact, losing this war,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

The two military experts gave their assessment in response to Trump\u2019s then-prodding as to whether Putin\u2019s grandstanding of supposed success in Ukraine was true, Kellogg said, giving a rare glimpse into private discussions at the White House.<\/p>\n

\u201cI responded quite forcefully, and I finally said, \u2018Mr. President, don\u2019t just listen to me. Your chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Dan Caine, is outside. He\u2019s out in the hall, bring him in and ask him that question. He\u2019s your senior, he\u2019s your principal military adviser,’\u201d Kellogg said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd he did, and Dan said the same thing. He went, \u2018Nope, not winning.’\u201d<\/p>\n

The envoy said he also told leaders during a recent discussion in the Oval Office not to believe Putin\u2019s claims of having a formidable fighting force, reassuring senior administration officials they should not be afraid of Russian retaliation against the US<\/a> \u2014 something that held former President Joe Biden back from taking stronger action against Moscow.<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cThey were talking about the primacy of the Russian military and how they were, you know, pretty good,\u201d Kellogg said. \u201cAnd I said to the people in the room, \u2018We\u2019d kick their ass.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd what I mean by that is: Don\u2019t take their statements at face value. They\u2019re, I mean, they\u2019re not as good as Putin says they are.\u201d<\/p>\n

Still, Kellogg<\/a> acknowledged that Moscow has made some minor territorial advancements in Ukraine\u2019s east \u2014 but he said its losses far outweigh any gains.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey may make movements. It seems so they\u2019re advancing in the Donbas region, in the Donetsk, but if you consider advancing moving by meters, not miles, well then OK, that\u2019s successful, but the cost that they\u2019re having is enormous, and I don\u2019t think people truly appreciate it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Manpower-wise, the cost to Russia has been \u201cwell over a million\u201d when considering the total troops dead and wounded, he said, noting that the Soviet Union left Afghanistan after losing 18,000.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese numbers are World War II-level numbers, when you think about it. They\u2019re stunning in the loss,\u201d he said. \u201c\u2026 They\u2019re pulling tanks out of mothballs, out of museums, to put on the battle line. They can\u2019t operate in large movements because the Ukrainians will kill them. And Ukrainians are fighting valiantly on there.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSo do I think the Russians are winning<\/a>? Putin says it, and I think the West just needs to push back and say, \u2018No, you\u2019re not.’\u201d<\/p>\n

Kellogg credited the Ukrainian military for taking Moscow\u2019s forces \u201cdown a couple of notches,\u201d noting that no one \u201cshould be afraid of the Russian military.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a nuclear power, check that box \u2014 I\u2019ve got that. But I don\u2019t believe they\u2019ve got the capacity<\/a> that they had that they could march towards Berlin or anywhere else,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Kellogg also told western partners to \u201craise [their] risk level\u201d when dealing with Putin, calling on Europeans to take more decisive action against Moscow \u2014 including by stopping purchases of Russian oil, which Trump has said is the main source of income fueling the Kremlin\u2019s war machine.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019ve got to apply absolute economic pressures, and this means you got to put some risk into the game,\u201d he said. \u201cYou\u2019re gonna have to make a hard call \u2026 and when you talk about the oil, shut down their revenue<\/a>. It\u2019s a petrol state.\u201d<\/p>\n

Source\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Trump doesn\u2019t have any military understanding. So he relies on his advisers and that\u2019s the problem. His two principle military aides, Presidential Envoy Keith Kellogg and Air Force Gen. Dan Caine, are both warmongers who have assured him that Russia can be easily dealt with. This is a recipe for disaster <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":315698,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[41,91,116],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-315697","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-Inside_the_White_House_and_Washingtons_Beltway","category-russia","category-ukraine"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315697","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=315697"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315697\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":315723,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315697\/revisions\/315723"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/315698"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=315697"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=315697"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=315697"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}