Keith Kellogg briefs reporters at the White House in Washington, DC, 22 September 2020. Photo: EPA-EFE / SARAH SILBIGER / POOL

A planned visit to Ukraine by Keith Kellogg, the incoming US special envoy for Ukraine and Russia, has been postponed, Reuters reported on Tuesday.

According to four anonymous sources, the trip, which had originally been planned for early January, has been pushed back to a still undecided date after president-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration on 20 January.

The reason for the postponement of the trip, which would have been the first official visit to Ukraine by a representative of the second Trump administration, has not been disclosed, though according Reuters, meetings with senior Ukrainian officials had been scheduled in Kyiv, as well as with European officials in other legs of the trip in Paris and Rome, which it described as a “fact-finding trip”.

Ending the War in Ukraine as quickly as possible is a priority for the Trump administration, after Trump repeatedly claimed that he could end the conflict within 24 hours while on the campaign trail last year. Last month, Trump met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Paris to discuss ending the war, with most analysts believing that Trump favours a peace deal in which Ukraine agrees to cede the territory currently occupied by Russian forces to Moscow, or approximately 20% of sovereign Ukrainian territory.

Trump nominated Keith Kellogg, a retired US military lieutenant-general to be his special envoy for Ukraine and Russia in November, creating a new White House role. Kellogg previously worked as the Chief of Staff of the US National Security Council and as a security advisor for Trump’s former vice president Mike Pence.