Pete Hegseth tells NATO that a return to Ukraine's 2014 borders is 'unrealistic'
Pete Hegseth tells NATO that a return to Ukraine's 2014 borders is 'unrealistic'
Speaking at a NATO meeting in Belgium, the defense secretary said the U.S. would no longer tolerate an imbalanced relationship with its allies.
Summary
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth stated that restoring Ukraine’s pre-2014 borders is “unrealistic,” signaling a shift in U.S. policy toward negotiated settlements.
Speaking at NATO headquarters, he argued that pursuing full territorial recovery would prolong the war and emphasized the need for security guarantees without NATO membership or U.S. troops in Ukraine.
Hegseth outlined Trump’s approach of reducing Russian war funding through increased U.S. energy production while shifting more military support responsibility to Europe.
"Putin's puppet administration says NATO should cede everything to Putin, news at 11."
Trump knows the proxy war in Ukraine is lost. The Ukrainians had their civil war, and the whole time one side was receiving weapons from NATO and the other side was receiving weapons from Russia. In the end they were unable to come to a unifying agreement, despite multiple peace talks.
Finally, Russia intervened directly and the Ukrainian side receiving their support disappeared from the news. Since Russia invaded we’ve been given this narrative that Putin wants territory, but it’s that side in Ukraine’s civil war that is leading its people to join Russia. They felt that was the better deal and would rather have security than reunify with the other half.
Ukraine is only shrinking because the NATO-backed side started the civil war. These are the consequences of refusing to allow the democratic process to play out. The NATO-backed side lost an election and then initiated a coup in 2014, kickstarting the destruction of their country. Fuck around, find out.
Oh great, another Putinbot spouting reams of misinformation.
Trying to clean up the whole mess from your firehose of bullshit is a fool's errand, but here are a couple counterpoints for the benefit of anyone not already familiar with the relevant history:
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The war in Ukraine was not "civil." It was being waged by Russian troops acting as "separatists," a disguise so thin that the only ones to buy it were on Russian state TV.
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Every single escalation in the conflict was by Russia, ever since the hostile takeover of Crimea.
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The military strength of Russia compared to NATO is so ridiculously lopsided that the only way Russia could possibly "win" is if they're able to sabotage NATO from the inside, for instance by manipulating foreign elections enough to put a Russian puppet in charge.
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If the war is already lost why do russian oil refineries keep exploding? If Russia is winning so hard why are frontline troops moving around in unarmored golf carts? Why does Ukraine still hold land in Russia? Where'd the best Koreans go? Why are we over 1,000 days into a 3 day SMO? Is putin bad at counting?
Russia has been waging imperialistic wars against its neighbours since way before Ukraine.
It will also continue to do so, since it managed to fuck up its economy so bad it can't get back from a war economy.
Also, if anything this would still be a NATO victory even if it's not a total Ukrainian victory. Russian military stockpiles are fucked, Europe is bringing back NATO with new funding, better cooperation and key new members.
We've got NATO lake and the Moskva is still sunk. Wonder how long it will take to rebuild it. Sanctions are not going anywhere either.
By 2013, it was clear that Ukraine’s democratic facade was crumbling. [...] The Party of Regions controlled the Cabinet, the Parliament (Verkhovna Rada), and most local councils. Its leading [financial-political groups] also controlled most of the courts, the police, the tax administration, and major state-owned industrial companies—in other words, the lion’s share of the economy.
Doesn't look much like a healthy democracy to me.
And the 2014 coup being backed by Western powers appears to me to merely be a Kremlin talking point. Do you have any reliable source to backup that claim?
IVAN! WHY DO THE REFINERIES KEEP EXPLODING IVAN??
Agreed! Ukraine should keep all that Russian land they conquered.
Unfortunately, there really isn't that much of it, even if it royally pisses Moscow off.
The problem is - while he might not be wrong, simply because it’s unlikely that Russia would accept a total territorial loss at the negotiation table - ceding anything to the Russian imperialists is an invitation to keep pushing.
The truth is that the US of course do not care about the Ukraine as a sovereign entity. They care only about maintaining their own geopolitical interests.
On the other hand do I doubt that Russia is interested in merely maintaining their territorial gains - maybe as a special zone of some sort - if that would mean that the Ukraine would pursue a proper membership in NATO.
So what we will likely see is that Russia will want to maintain or increase their presence in eastern Ukraine, maintain Crimea and want assurances that Ukraine will remain a neutral buffer state.
Leading to the Ukraine being screwed over either way.
They care only about maintaining their own geopolitical interests.
That used to be the case. Now the US only cares about whatever Trump wants, AKA whatever Putin told him he wants.
Any time anyone says something like OP did, I imagine them in front of a whiteboard trying to explain to themselves how the US of today is the same US as last month.
Along with geopolitical interests, the US is interested in Ukraine’s natural resources.
https://geopoliticaleconomy.com/2024/09/16/senator-lindsey-graham-ukraine-trillion-minerals/
If the US is not helping, they should fuck all the way off.
Russia may want a pause of several years to allow Ukraine’s arms support relationships with the West to expire, whereupon it would attack again, this time informed by everything that went wrong in this recent war.
I dunno. Maybe? It’s just a thought.
They won't expire, there is a literal brand new Rheinmetall factory in Ukraine.
Trump is all about shifting defense responsibility onto Europe but isn’t it the cas that the US proactively claimed responsibility for defense of virtually every sphere where it has interests? We have the largest military in the world by FAR and bases everywhere, and have allowed others to spend less on defense because we want to be the ones with the big stick. It’s a little ironic for Trump to complain that everyone has allowed us to pursue this policy we have been driving for decades.
Lol sorry, every nation in Europe is a sovereign entity and is responsible for the safety of their citizens and the integrity of their borders.
Poland made the decision to arm itself and has been spending for years. Lack of investment in the military is fundamentally a national decision to divert money into other programs or tax cuts.
The US has been becoming less and less interested in the rules based order we built after WW2 for the last 20 years.
Many people have predicted this would happen. You have only yourselves to blame.
We will see what happens when Trump pulls US support out of Ukraine.
I sincerely hope you are right and Europe marshalls an effective defense. If you do, you’ll do so at great cost in blood and treasure. If you don’t you’ll watch Russia nibble away at Europe for the next several decades. Neither of those is anything to “lol” about.
Damn the US sure seems impotent and weak these days if they can't even restore boundaries from just ten years ago.
They just lost the cold war.
I'm surprised he can say anything with Putin's dick that far down his throat.
Let me know how many ml comm bans you got for that one.
I mean it's also pretty unrealistic that a drunk-ass low-life redneck would be secretary of defense, yet here we are.
are you trying to tell us that spending your teenage years watching Springer everyday isn't a path to international notoriety?
Notoriety, maybe.
Pete HegsethPutin tells NATO...Oh come on, if you're going to shake UA down for 500B in rare earths the least you can do is a li'l reacharound while fucking them in the ass. Stay classy.
You'd think Zekensky would give him that amount in relation to the amount of land liberated.
What his opinion after he loosens up with a gallon of vodka or 2?