Putin “not winning this war,” Kellogg tells Warsaw forum

The Guardian reported.

Speaking from the forum stage, U.S. special envoy Keith Kellogg said Moscow was not on a path to victory. 

“I think probably in his heart of hearts he realizes he can’t win this. This is an unwinnable fight for him, long-term. It’s not going to happen,” Kellogg said, offering a blunt diagnosis of President Vladimir Putin’s position.

“Look at the world as it is,” Wallace says

Former U.K. defence secretary Ben Wallace, reflecting on lessons from the Russian invasion, urged Western policymakers to stop assuming adversaries behave logically and instead confront realities on the ground.

“The first lesson is we must look at the world not as we wish it to be, but in the way it is,” Wallace said. He recalled early hesitancy in Europe to send even non-lethal equipment, describing how some governments refused to export diggers—“diggers, not guns, not missiles” — for fear of provoking Moscow.

“That mindset — that our adversaries are the same as us, that they will act logically — is dangerous,” he warned. “I remember one senior member of an intelligence service in Europe saying to me that Putin wouldn’t invade because it wouldn’t be logical. Well, no, it’s not logical by any benchmark.”

Make Crimea “unviable”: choke lifelines, hit symbols

Wallace argued that the way to change Putin’s calculations is to deny him the benefits he prizes most — control of Ukraine and the symbolic hold over Crimea.

“We have to help Ukraine have the long-range capabilities to make Crimea unviable. We need to choke the life out of Crimea,” he said. Wallace urged partners to supply systems such as Taurus cruise missiles from Germany and to target key infrastructure, explicitly naming the Kerch Bridge as “a statue to Putin’s ego.”

“That bridge… we need Tauruses in from Germany, we need to smash the Kerch Bridge, because that’s a statue to Putin’s ego, and I think if we do that Putin will suddenly realise he’s got something to lose,” Wallace said, arguing that convincing Putin he stands to lose Crimea could change his willingness to press on.

“A Russia tax”: costs of Putin’s actions, says Icelandic envoy

Thórdís Kolbrún Reykfjörd Gylfadóttir, former Icelandic foreign minister and the Council of Europe’s special envoy on the situation of children of Ukraine, framed Western support for Kyiv in stark terms: it is a cost imposed by Moscow’s behaviour.

“When we talk about the support for Ukraine… we should maybe just call it what it is. It is a Russia tax,” she said. “Russia has put a tax on Europe, and we just have to pay for it. If Russia wasn’t out of control, we would not have to be doing what we’re doing.”

Gylfadóttir said the conversation with the public should be honest: the assistance is not only charity or justice, “it’s because of their behaviour that we have to pay that tax.”

Strategic messaging and political risk

Speakers at the forum repeatedly returned to the themes of realism and the political dimensions of military aid. Kellogg’s assessment that Putin cannot prevail was complemented by warnings that Western governments must shed bureaucratic caution and provide capabilities that change the strategic balance.

Wallace’s language was stark and unapologetic, blending military prescription with political calculus: if Crimea becomes a drain rather than an asset, his argument went, Putin’s appetite for the current course may diminish.

What the forum signals

Taken together, the comments at the Warsaw forum underline a consensus among several Western figures: Russia is not on track to achieve a decisive victory, but neither will the conflict end without sustained and potentially escalatory measures. Speakers openly debated the need for long-range weapons, economic pressure and targeted strikes on infrastructure that undergirds Russian control of occupied areas.

That debate — and its uneasy mix of military prescription and political messaging — underscores the tensions Western capitals face: how to supply Ukraine with what it needs to prevail strategically, while managing the broader risks of escalation and the domestic political costs of continued support.