US Envoy May Visit Belarus in Bid to Restart Peace Talks

The US President’s special representative for Ukraine, Keith Kellogg, is planning to visit Belarus in the coming days, where he is expected to meet with Alexander Lukashenko, widely regarded by the international community as Europe’s longest-ruling dictator.

Although no official confirmation of the visit has been made public. If the trip proceeds, Kellogg could become the highest-level US official to visit Belarus in recent years.

According to two sources, cited by Reuters, the exact agenda of the visit remains unclear. However, in private conversations, Kellogg reportedly described the trip as a potential step toward reinitiating peace talks aimed at ending Russia’s war against Ukraine.

The US State Department and the Belarusian Embassy in Washington declined to comment, while Kellogg and the White House did not respond to Reuters’ requests for comment. The department also notes that such visits require careful planning and coordination, and the trip could be postponed or altered at the last moment.

In 2020, during Trump’s first presidential term, then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo visited Belarus — the highest-level US visit to the Eastern European country in more than two decades. The trip was part of the Trump administration’s efforts to improve ties with Minsk amid strained relations between Belarus and Russia.

However, after Joe Biden took office, the US shifted its approach. Washington strongly condemned the 2020 Belarusian presidential election as undemocratic, and the brutal crackdown on mass protests that followed drew sharp criticism from the West.

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In 2022, the United States suspended operations at its embassy in Belarus after the Lukashenko regime backed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and allowed the use of Belarusian territory for attacks on Ukrainian cities.

Western diplomats, however, have expressed skepticism about US efforts to court Minsk, which remains firmly aligned and has deep links with the Kremlin, Reuters added.