Hegseth rules out NATO membership for Ukraine 

Hind Al Soulia - Riyadh - BRUSSELS — US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said on Wednesday that the war between Ukraine and Russia “must end,” that Kyiv joining NATO is unrealistic and that the US will no longer prioritize European and Ukrainian security as the Trump administration shifts its attention to securing the US’ own borders and deterring war with China.

In remarks before a meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, Hegseth also said that European troops should be the primary force securing a post-war Ukraine—something US troops will not be involved in, he added.

“The United States does not believe that NATO membership for Ukraine is a realistic outcome of a negotiated settlement,” Hegseth said. And he added that any security guarantees offered to Ukraine “must be backed by capable European and non-European troops.”

“To be clear, as part of any security guarantee, there will not be US troops deployed to Ukraine,” he said.

Hegseth also said that a return to Ukraine’s pre-2014 borders, before Russia invaded Crimea and eastern Ukraine, “is an unrealistic objective.”

Many NATO allies would actually agree with Hegseth that getting Crimea back from Russia is not realistic, and not even Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has insisted on that as a precursor to peace talks. One NATO official said it would have been more concerning if Hegseth had said that returning to Ukraine’s pre-2022 borders was unrealistic.

But the comments about security guarantees are sure to concern Zelensky, who said this week that Europe alone cannot provide meaningful security guarantees to Ukraine without American leadership. Zelensky has also continued to insist that his country joining NATO is the only way to deter Russia from launching new attacks in the future.

Hours after Hegseth spoke, President Donald Trump announced he’d spoken with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday morning. Trump said the two agreed to work “very closely” together and begin negotiations “immediately” on ending the war in Ukraine.

“[W]e will begin by calling President Zelensky, of Ukraine, to inform him of the conversation,” Trump said. The Kremlin said Wednesday that Putin invited Trump to visit Moscow, which would mark the first visit by a US president since 2013.

Trump spoke with Zelensky shortly after getting off the phone with Putin.

Later on Wednesday afternoon, Trump said he agrees with Hegseth and does not “think it’s practical” to have Ukraine join NATO.

“I don’t think it’s practical to have it. Personally, I know that our new secretary of defense is excellent. Pete made a statement today saying that he thinks it’s unlikely or impractical. I think probably that’s true. I think long before President Putin, they said there’s no way they’d allow that. This has been going on for many, many years. They’ve been saying that for a long time that Ukraine did not go into NATO, and I’m okay with that,” Trump said from the Oval Office.

A European defense official told CNN that while many in NATO don’t necessarily believe Ukraine can join the alliance given the political realities with Russia, they also don’t say so publicly —as Hegseth did — because they want to avoid giving Russia the idea that it can dictate who can and cannot join.

Some former Biden administration officials weighed in quickly on X, saying Hegseth had ceded valuable leverage.

“They just surrendered one of the main points of leverage before negotiations even begin,” said former State Department spokesman Matthew Miller.

Hegseth also did not announce any new US aid to Ukraine. “We’re also here today to directly and unambiguously express that stark strategic realities prevent the United States of America from being primarily focused on the security of Europe,” he said.

Hegseth’s comments did not necessarily come as a surprise to the US allies. NATO and the European Union had been bracing for the US to step back significantly from the leading role it had been playing since 2022 in providing and coordinating military aid to Ukraine. That is why NATO set up its own security mechanism to help coordinate military assistance to the country.

“We hear your concerns on stepping up for Ukraine, and we hear your concerns on stepping up for European security,” UK Defense Secretary John Healey said in response. “We are and we will.”

The UK may quickly be supplanting the US as Ukraine’s closest western ally. It chaired the meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group for the first time on Wednesday, and Ukrainian defense minister Rustem Umerov issued a lengthy readout of his meeting with Healey at NATO on Wednesday, accompanied by a photo of the pair shaking hands and smiling.

In contrast, Umerov’s description of his meeting with Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth was one sentence long, accompanied by a photo of them standing side by side, without shaking hands.

And NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said earlier on Wednesday that he “agrees” with Trump “that we must equalize security assistance to Ukraine. But to really change the trajectory of the conflict, we need to do even more.”

And Dutch Defense Minister Ruben Brekelmans told CNN that “I do agree that as Europe, we should do much more in order to defend our own continent and to safeguard our own security.”

But the US defense secretary’s comments were the clearest articulation yet of how the Trump administration intends to try to decouple itself from Europe and make the Ukraine conflict a fully European problem. It’s a stark departure from the approach of the Biden administration, which made the transatlantic alliance and support for Ukraine the centerpiece of its foreign policy.

The alliance’s smaller, eastern flank countries — those closest to Russia — are particularly worried about the US stepping back.

Latvian Defense Minister Andris Sprūds told CNN that the US is “absolutely indispensable” when it comes to “constraining and containing the aggressor country, Russia.”

Hegseth also echoed calls by Trump for allies to increase their defense spending to 5% of their GDP, instead of 2%, saying the latter is “not enough.” A senior NATO official told reporters on Wednesday that the “the ask by the US for European allies ... to invest more is nothing new,” and agreed that 2% is too low.

Toward the end of his remarks, Hegseth emphasized that the US “remains committed to the NATO alliance and to the defense partnership with Europe. Full stop. But the United States will no longer tolerate an imbalanced relationship which encourages dependency.”

The European defense official said after Hegseth spoke that there is a general feeling of relief that the US is not planning to pull out of NATO altogether. The sentiment is that as long as the US remains a member of the alliance, there will at least be some room to negotiate on the specifics of the US’ support for Europe and Ukraine.

For now, the US is not halting the military aid to Ukraine that is already flowing from aid packages announced during the previous administration.

But as has long been the case, Ukraine still needs more armored vehicles, long range-weapons and air defense systems, the NATO official told CNN. And Hegseth gave no indications on Wednesday that the US will continue dipping into US military stockpiles to send weapons and equipment to Ukraine, a process known as Presidential Drawdown Authority.

The Department of Defense has not yet done so with the nearly $4 billion in congressionally authorized funds that were left over from the previous administration.

Hegseth also did not outline what a possible negotiated settlement between Ukraine and Russia might look like. In an interview with Britain’s The Guardian published Tuesday, Zelensky suggested swapping territory seized by Ukrainian forces inside Russia’s Kursk region for Ukrainian territory seized by Russia—but Moscow swiftly rejected the idea.

“Russia has never discussed and will not discuss the topic of exchanging its territory,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said on Wednesday.

As CNN reported on Tuesday, there is a hardening consensus within the administration that Putin, rather than Zelensky, will be the main hurdle to getting both sides to the negotiating table. European officials similarly said they’ve seen no signs that Putin is willing to engage in meaningful negotiations. — CNN