US President Donald Trump called his special envoy Keith Kellogg an "idiot" after he described Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as a "courageous leader", The New York Times reported, citing its sources.
According to the newspaper, the reason was Kellogg's speech at the Munich Security Conference in February.
There, Kellogg met with his European colleagues, but his role in the administration is unclear.
A day earlier, Presidents Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump spoke and agreed to start negotiations to resolve the conflict between Russia and Ukraine.
The US president then announced that the American team would include the director of the CIA John Ratcliffe, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and adviser Mike Walz. Kellogg assured the Europeans that he remained their "best friend" in the White House.
A "close aide" to US Defense Secretary Pete Hegsett reported to Washington about Kellogg's talks with the Europeans, the newspaper reported. He claimed that Kellogg had declared that he was defending the White House "from these isolationists" in favor of helping Ukraine. In addition, the special envoy's position was shaken by his publication in X, in which he called Zelensky "a fighting and courageous leader of a country at war."
Kellogg then visited Trump in the Oval Office, where the US president sharply asked him: "So you call Zelensky a brave man in a difficult situation?" Kellogg responded in the affirmative and compared Zelensky to the 16th president of the United States, Abraham Lincoln.
„Later, recounting the episode to other advisers, Trump muttered: „He's an idiot,“ the newspaper reported.