Hegseth expected to skip key meeting with allies on Ukraine support
CNN
US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is not expected to attend next week’s meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group in Brussels, marking the first time since the group’s founding three years ago that a senior Pentagon official will not be there to represent the US, officials familiar with the matter told CNN.
US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is not expected to attend next week’s meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group in Brussels, marking the first time since the group’s founding three years ago that a senior Pentagon official will not be there to represent the US, officials familiar with the matter told CNN. The US has for months been steadily pulling back from the group, which was founded by former Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin in 2022 after Russia’s invasion as a way for dozens of countries to streamline the delivery of military equipment to Ukraine to quell Russian military advances. Whereas Austin or a senior Pentagon official always chaired the group’s monthly meetings, Hegseth has ceded that role to the UK in recent months—even as a senior US general told lawmakers on Thursday that “continuing to assist Ukraine on the battlefield daily” is “very important” when it comes to maintaining leverage over the Russians. Hegseth attended a meeting of the UDCG in February at NATO headquarters in Brussels, where he told allies that the US would no longer be a guarantor of European security and that it was highly “unlikely” that Ukraine would ever join NATO—a comment that, at the time, marked a dramatic shift from the longtime US position that Ukraine would one day join the alliance. Defense News was first to report Hegseth is likely to skip the meeting next week. The Trump administration has turned on and off its military and intelligence support to Ukraine in recent months as a way to push Kyiv to the negotiating table. The US hasn’t imposed any penalties on Russia, even as Moscow has refused to agree to a White House proposal for a 30-day ceasefire and continues to place conditions on even a partial ceasefire in the Black Sea.
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