From Kyiv I tell my envoy dad: ‘please, dear God, see this’

General Keith Kellogg, the Trump administration’s Ukraine envoy, probably did not need reminding by his daughter about President Putin’s approach to peace talks.

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky greets US envoy Keith Kellogg at his offices in Kyiv in February. Picture: Sergei Supinsky / AFP

It might have been the explosions or gunfire in the dead of night, but a “strange feeling” told Meaghan Mobbs that Russia was not all that interested in peace.

“Loud night in Kyiv, Dad!” she wrote in a June 5 post on X that went viral, not because Ms Mobbs was different from others enduring Moscow’s onslaught on Kyiv last month, but because of who her father is.

General Keith Kellogg, the Trump administration’s Ukraine envoy, probably did not need reminding about President Putin’s approach to peace talks with his American counterpart, having watched as the Russian leader appeared to be willing to discuss ending the war, only to then dramatically escalate his bombardment of Ukraine.

Ms Mobbs, whose RT Weatherman Foundation has been leading humanitarian work since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, emerged as one of the most vocal American advocates for Ukraine and one who has the ear of those in a position to influence US policy.

“People responded [to the X post] saying, you should be telling your dad this stuff privately,” she told The Times.

“It was born out of frustration, desperation, like, ‘please, dear God, see this’,” she said of the X post, which was viewed more than half a million times. “I had zero expectation it was going to get the attention it did because I thought it was relatively well known in DC that I’m extraordinarily close with my father. Does he take my advice? Who knows? But I know it needed to be said.”

Ms Mobbs, 38, spends her time between Virginia and the front lines of Ukraine. The Kremlin is well aware of her work.

Her father, a retired lieutenant general who served as chief of staff of the National Security Council in the first Trump administration, was named as special representative for Ukraine and Russia, but was removed from the portfolio after two months, the first of several Trump advisers sympathetic to Ukraine to be sidelined.

Ms Mobbs called the Kremlin’s apparent dislike of her “a badge of honour”.

Her foundation runs a logistics hub on the Romanian-Ukrainian border, from which more than 10,000 pallets of medical supplies have been delivered to more than 70 hospitals and aid organisations.

Ms Mobbs said: “The thing with my father is he is not manipulable. He served all four years in the previous Trump administration. He was in every major national security division. He was on every call with Putin. He’s very experienced. The Russians don’t want that. They want someone they can manipulate.”

Mr Trump had claimed he could leverage his relationship with the Russian leader to bring peace, but Ms Mobbs sees Mr Putin’s continued aggression as proof that he is “not one bit interested” in ending the war, not least on US terms.

The Times