U.S. envoy Keith Kellogg met in Kyiv Thursday with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, but there was no immediate word on whether they had eased U.S.-Ukrainian relations after U.S. President Donald Trump and Zelenskyy traded barbs this week over Russia’s three-year war against Ukraine.

Kellogg said upon arriving in the Ukrainian capital that he was there to listen to Zelenskyy’s views after officials in Kyiv voiced their anger at being excluded this week when the top U.S. and Russian diplomats met in Saudi Arabia to lay the groundwork for talks to end the fighting.

After Kellogg met with Zelenskyy, the two men were expected to hold a news conference, but the Ukrainian side said the Americans asked that it be called off, and it was.

Trump and Zelenskyy assailed each other this week. The U.S. president, echoing Russian attacks, called Zelenskyy a “dictator without elections,” while Zelenskyy accused Trump of living in a Russian-influenced “disinformation space” when the U.S. leader indicated that Ukraine started the war. It was Moscow that invaded its neighbor three years ago next week.

Ukraine fears that Trump is moving to settle the war on terms more favorable to Moscow. Russia currently controls about a fifth of Ukraine’s internationally recognized territory.

U.S. Vice President JD Vance told a gathering of conservative activists outside Washington on Thursday that Trump “wants the killing to stop” in Ukraine and that “peace is in the interest of the American people.”

He said after the U.S.-Russian talks in Riyadh, “We’re on the cusp of peace.” Vance did not mention Ukraine’s role in settling the conflict, although U.S. officials have said Kyiv and Moscow will both be involved in the settlement and have to make concessions to achieve peace.

European leaders have responded to Trump’s recent remarks about Ukraine by pledging to step up spending on defense, and some are considering a U.S.-backed European peacekeeping force for the country if the fighting ends. The Kremlin says the plan is a major cause for concern, but Zelenskyy and NATO have welcomed it.

“It is vital that … Russia will never again try to take one more square kilometer of Ukrainian land,” NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte said, adding that a peace pact would have to entail robust security guarantees for Ukraine.

“While there is much that still needs to be decided, there is no question that Europe has a vital role to play in securing peace in Ukraine,” he told reporters in Bratislava.

In a string of comments on his Truth Social platform this week, Trump accused Zelenskyy of refusing to hold elections in Ukraine, which had been scheduled for April 2024 but were delayed after Russia invaded in 2022.

Trump disparaged Zelenskyy as “a modestly successful comedian” and said, “The only thing he was good at was playing [former U.S. President Joe] Biden ‘like a fiddle'” for more U.S. military assistance.”

“I love Ukraine,” Trump said, “but Zelenskyy has done a terrible job, his Country is shattered, and MILLIONS have unnecessarily died — And so it continues.”

Earlier, Trump had scoffed at Zelenskyy’s complaint about not being invited to the Tuesday talks in Riyadh headed by U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.

“Today I heard, ‘Well, we weren’t invited.’ Well, you’ve been there for three years,” Trump said of Ukraine’s leaders.
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