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?
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.
Trump is all about shifting defense responsibility onto Europe but isn’t it the case 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.
I don’t like what you said but sadly it is true - we should have invested much more in the defence and start permanent sanctions on Russia since Chechnya war.
That doesn’t distract from the fact that Trump is a cunt working hand in hand with Putler.
I 100% agree.
For at least the next 4 years I would not count on the US honoring any security arrangements. Any intelligence shared with us is likely going to be passed to Russia.
I honestly wouldn’t have completely counted on the US before that either. Countries don’t have friends and they all only work for themselves.
While there are groups that are often going in the same direction, you can’t just count on others. Each deal is unique, and each treaty can be broken at any time. The US move when it’s in their interest to do so. But should their local political situation be tense, or if there’s nothing to gain, it’s much less obvious IMO. And of course, at the moment, it’s quite likely that most treaties will just be put to the shredder.
The problem is a HUGE part of our economy and the world economy depends on this spending. Musk and Trump are fucking morons who are actively destroying the US economy and strength.
Absolutely, they are destroying the rules based order with no fucking clue as to what will replace it.
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.
Your first sentence is laughably false. It’s like you don’t have a clue the eu exists.
Wow you sound sooo smart! Waaay more smart than me, a dumb American!
Please educate me on the date that the EU began to field an army?
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.
What was his BAC at the time?
1
At this point in his miserable attempt at a life, his alcohol has no blood…
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?
