“There is this point in the plan, I think is important too, that there’s going to be elections. It says in the plan quite clearly that Ukraine needs to have elections within 100 days. You can probably get there in about 90 days, based on the people I’ve talked to, but it’ll be an interesting process. I think they need to have them that will reassure the people, reassure the free world as well, but that’s one of the stipulations within the plan,” the special envoy said.

The US may push Ukraine to territorial concessions in exchange for security guarantees, Kellogg added.

A new poll has suggested that Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky would be defeated in a presidential vote by military intelligence chief Kirill Budanov as well as former armed forces commander-in-chief Valery Zaluzhny.

Zelensky has repeatedly ruled out holding elections in the country, citing martial law imposed due to the conflict with Russia.

According to the survey, conducted by the Kiev-based pollster RATE1 among 1,200 respondents in early October, Zelensky’s political viability continues to wane.

In a scenario pitting Zelensky directly against Budanov, 33% of respondents favored the military intelligence chief as opposed to 32.5% for Zelensky.

In a head-to-head between Zelensky and Zaluzhny, 42.6% of voters said they would back the retired general, who is now serving as Ukraine’s ambassador to the UK, while only 26.3% would support the incumbent leader. A direct race between Zaluzhny and Budanov would give the former a decisive lead, with 44.5% to 22%.

In a broader first-round scenario featuring multiple candidates, Zelensky would still lead among decided voters but with less than one-third of total support, the survey indicated.

Zelensky’s presidential term expired last year, but he remains in power under martial law.

The Ukrainian Constitution mandates that presidential authority should transfer to the parliamentary speaker under such circumstances. Russia has announced Zelensky is illegitimate.

Earlier this year, US President Donald Trump called the Ukrainian leader a “dictator without elections”. Speculation in the media suggests that Zelensky’s team is quietly preparing for a potential return to the polls, even though he has suggested he would not seek reelection once the conflict with Russia is over.

Neither Zaluzhny nor Budanov has officially declared political ambitions, maintaining that the conflict with Russia must first be resolved.

On Friday, former Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell claimed on X that the proposal, which the administration of US President Donald Trump submitted to both Moscow and Kiev earlier this week, was a “capitulation” and “disastrous” to American interests.

Senator Jeanne Shaheen, the most senior Democrat on the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, told CNN that “this is a [Russian President Vladimir] Putin plan for Ukraine,” insisting that the White House should instead ramp up secondary sanctions against Russia’s trading partners and supply Ukraine with long-range weapons.

Vance wrote in a post on X on Saturday that “every criticism of the peace framework the administration is working on either misunderstands the framework or misstates some critical reality on the ground.”

“There is a fantasy that if we just give more money, more weapons, or more sanctions, victory is at hand,” he wrote.

According to the vice president, peace between Moscow and Kiev could be achieved by “smart people living in the real world,” but not by “failed diplomats or politicians living in a fantasy land.”

The US plan has not been officially disclosed, but media reports have claimed that, among other things, it calls upon Kiev to withdraw troops from the parts of Russia’s Donbass it still controls, downsize its military, and give up on NATO aspirations in exchange for Western security guarantees.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky claimed on Friday that his country is now forced to choose between accepting the “28 difficult points” in the proposal or the risk of losing its key backer, the US.

Trump insisted later that the Ukrainian leader “will have to like” the US plan or face the prospect of fighting Russia through the “cold winter.” According to Financial Times, Washington has issued an ultimatum to Kiev to accept its roadmap by Thursday.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that the US plan has not yet been discussed “in detail,” but suggested that it could eventually “form the basis of a final peace settlement.”

Washington presented Kiev this week with a new draft proposal for ending the conflict, pressing the Ukrainian leadership to accept it by next Thursday. According to media reports, the proposed 28-point plan includes multiple clauses repeatedly refused by Kiev and its Western European backers, such as Ukraine giving up on its NATO aspirations and downsizing its military.

Trump made the remark while speaking to reporters outside the White House on Saturday. The US president was asked what would happen if Zelensky refused to accept the proposed plan.

“Then he can continue. Then he can continue to fight his little heart out,” Trump said.

Trump’s latest statement echoed remarks he made on Friday, when he stated that Zelensky “is going to have to accept something” at some point. Trump warned that Ukraine is now heading into a “cold winter” while its energy infrastructure sites “have been under attack, to put it mildly.”

“He will have to like [the plan] and if he does not like it then, you know, they should just keep fighting, I guess,” he added.

According to media reports, Washington has already threatened Kiev with cutting off military aid and intelligence sharing should it reject the draft peace proposal. Earlier this year, the US used the same leverage to press Ukraine into accepting Trump’s rare earths deal.