President Donald Trump‘s secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, may have gotten ahead of his skies.
He’s walking back comments Thursday, a day after he said NATO membership for Ukraine was unrealistic and suggested Kyiv should abandon hopes of winning all its territory back from Russia and instead prepare for a negotiated peace settlement to be backed up by international troops.
Currently, he’s saying “‘everything is on the table’ when it comes to negotiations between Russia and Ukraine, per CNN’s Natasha Bertand.
“This was a huge f–kup by Hegseth. There’s no walking back his initial comments that Ukraine won’t join NATO or gain back all the territory lost since 2014. He wrote Putin a big check that has already been cashed. Maybe don’t make an unqualified Fox News host @SecDef?” former Barack Obama staffer Tommy Vietor posted to X.
“Pete Hegseth f—ed up the biggest foreign policy issue on his plate on his first foreign trip. Tell me again how this cabinet is a meritocracy?” Vietor added.
Hours after Hegseth’s comments Wednesday, Trump said he and Russian President Vladimir Putin had agreed to begin negotiations on ending the Ukraine war. In a social media post that upended three years of U.S. policy toward Ukraine, the Republican disclosed a call between the two leaders and said they would “work together, very closely.” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s office said Zelenskyy and Trump also had a phone conversation.
Hegseth’s warning to Ukraine that it should abandon its NATO bid and its push to reclaim all Russian-occupied territory signaled starkly to Kyiv that the administration’s view of a potential settlement is remarkably close to Moscow’s vision. Putin has declared that any peace deal must ensure that Ukraine gives up its NATO ambitions and withdraws its troops from the four regions that Russia annexed in September 2022 but never fully captured.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.