U.S. Secretary of Protection Pete Hegseth speaks to members of the press throughout a bilateral assembly with Australian Deputy Prime Minister and Protection Minister Richard Marles on the Pentagon on February 7, 2025 in Arlington, Virginia.
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U.S. Protection Secretary Pete Hegseth mentioned on Wednesday {that a} return to Ukraine’s pre-2014 borders was unrealistic and the Trump administration doesn’t see NATO membership for Kyiv as a part of an answer to the warfare triggered by Russia’s invasion.
Talking at a gathering of Ukraine’s navy allies at NATO headquarters in Brussels, Hegseth delivered the clearest and bluntest public assertion to date on the brand new U.S. administration’s method to the almost three-year-old warfare.
He additionally informed Washington’s NATO allies that they must step up and assume higher accountability for Europe’s safety.
“We wish, such as you, a sovereign and affluent Ukraine. However we should begin by recognising that returning to Ukraine’s pre-2014 borders is an unrealistic goal,” Hegseth informed the assembly of greater than 40 international locations allied to Ukraine.
“Chasing this illusionary purpose will solely delay the warfare and trigger extra struggling,” he added. Russia annexed the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea from Ukraine in March 2014 after which backed pro-Russian separatists in an armed insurgency towards Kyiv’s forces within the japanese Donbas area of Ukraine.
Moscow presently controls about 20% of Ukraine’s territory, primarily within the east and south. Hegseth mentioned any sturdy peace should embody “strong safety ensures to make sure that the warfare won’t start once more.”
However, he mentioned, “the USA doesn’t imagine that NATO membership for Ukraine is a sensible final result of a negotiated settlement”. As a substitute, safety ensures ought to be backed by “succesful European and non-European troops”, the Pentagon chief mentioned.
“If these troops are deployed as peacekeepers to Ukraine at any level, they need to be deployed as a part of a non-NATO mission and so they shouldn’t be coated beneath Article 5,” he mentioned, referring to the alliance’s mutual protection clause.