By Mike Glenn The Washington Times Thursday, February 13, 2025

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Thursday brushed off European complaints that President Trump’s surprise one-on-one talk with Russian President Vladimir Putin amounted to a betrayal of Ukraine and stood by his comments a day earlier that it was unrealistic for Kyiv to expect a peace deal to return all the land it had lost since Russia invaded nearly three years ago.

Mr. Hegseth spoke to reporters at a gathering of NATO defense ministers in Brussels as U.S. allies adjusted to the stunning news that Mr. Trump and Mr. Putin had discussed a possible ceasefire deal at length. Top defense officials from Britain and Germany criticized the overture and said the U.S. administration made concessions to Mr. Putin before negotiations began.

In response to a reporter’s question, Mr. Hegseth rejected the criticism of Mr. Trump’s overture to Mr. Putin and his comments on what Ukraine can expect from any peace deal.

“There is no betrayal there,” Mr. Hegseth told reporters. “There is a recognition that the whole world and the United States is invested and interested in peace — a negotiated peace.

“Simply pointing out realism, like the borders won’t be rolled back to what everybody would like them to be in 2014, is not a concession to Vladimir Putin,” he said. “It’s a recognition of the hard power realities on the ground, after a lot of investment in sacrifice, first by the Ukrainians and then by allies, and then a realization that a negotiated peace is going to be some sort of demarcation that neither side wants.”

On Wednesday, the Pentagon chief told a gathering of dozens of Ukraine allies that Europe must lead in supplying Kyiv. He noted that the U.S. military’s priority is now securing the country’s southern border against illegal immigration and countering Chinese aggression in East Asia. He took NATO membership for Ukraine, long sought by the government of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, off the table and said the U.S. wouldn’t provide any troops for a peacekeeping operation there.

The U.S. is by far the leading military power in NATO, but the stunning diplomatic turn generated significant opposition.

NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte said any peace deal to end the fighting in Ukraine must be enduring and that Kyiv should be closely involved in the negotiations with Russia.

Speaking on the sidelines of the NATO defense ministers meeting, Mr. Rutte said the failure of the Minsk agreement, struck after Russia’s 2014 annexation of the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea, should not be repeated.

“It is crucial that whatever comes out of those talks is durable,” he said. “We cannot have Putin again trying to capture a square kilometer, a square mile of Ukraine in the future.”

Campaign pledge

Mr. Trump was following through on a campaign pledge to work to quickly end a war that has collectively resulted in more than 1 million casualties. He echoed in Oval Office comments Wednesday Mr. Hegseth’s point that it was unrealistic to expect Russia to give back all the territory it seized in the 3-year-old war.

After his call with Mr. Putin, Mr. Trump spoke with Mr. Zelenskyy, the president revealed on his Truth Social account.

Although he was reportedly miffed that Mr. Trump telephoned Moscow before Kyiv, Mr. Zelenskyy later characterized the conversation as a “meaningful discussion that provided greater clarity on key issues.” “We will continue to strengthen our cooperation with American partners, and of course, deeper engagement across Europe is urgently needed. Security is our shared responsibility,” the Ukrainian president said Thursday on his Telegram social messaging site.

Officials in Kyiv are studying a draft financial agreement with the United States that would offer continued American military support in exchange for developing Ukraine’s mineral industry believed to be worth at least $500 billion. A deal could provide the U.S. with a crucial source of the rare earth elements essential for many kinds of technology.

“During a phone call, Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelenskyy informed U.S. President Donald Trump that Ukraine had received the draft agreement and had begun analyzing it,” the Kyiv Post reported Thursday. “The discussions were held with U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent, who arrived in Kyiv on Thursday just as the capital was attacked by four Russian ballistic missiles.”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Thursday Mr. Trump’s call with Mr. Zelenskyy had lasted some 45 minutes — half the length of the Putin call but one that was conducted in English and did not need to be translated.

On Thursday, Mr. Hegseth called NATO “the most successful defense alliance in history” but said its European members must do more for the defense of the continent. That means increasing defense spending among NATO members, reviving Europe’s defense industrial base, rapidly fielding emerging technologies, and prioritizing readiness and lethality.

“We must make NATO great again,” Mr. Hegseth said in a clear nod to President Trump’s “Make America Great Again” motto.

British and German defense officials said Europe and the Kyiv government must be involved in any settlement to end the war. Kaja Kallas, the European Union’s top foreign policy official, said the U.S. position was tantamount to “appeasement.”

“We shouldn’t take anything off the table before the negotiations have even started because it plays to Russia’s court,” Ms. Kallas said, according to a report from The Associated Press. “Why are we giving [the Russians] everything that they want even before the negotiations have been started? It’s appeasement. It has never worked.”

German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius also rejected any attempt by the Trump administration to keep them on the sidelines during negotiations with Mr. Putin or Mr. Zelenskyy.

“Europe must be involved in the negotiations. I think that’s very easy to understand,” he said, adding that Ukraine’s closest neighbors would be forced to live directly with the consequences. “… In my view, it would have been better to speak about a possible Nato membership for Ukraine or possible losses of territory at the negotiating table.”

Celebrating in Russia

Commentators in Russia celebrated the news of the first direct contact in years between Mr. Putin and a sitting U.S. president. They said it marked the end of Western efforts to isolate Mr. Putin for his decision to invade Russia’s smaller neighbor.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters in Moscow that Russia was assembling a team of negotiators to meet with their U.S. counterparts. Mr. Trump said Wednesday that he and Mr. Putin had agreed to meet in person, possibly in Saudi Arabia.

Mr. Peskov said Mr. Putin and Mr. Trump did not discuss the fate of Russian-occupied land inside Ukraine. Russian forces now control an estimated 20% of Ukraine’s internationally recognized territory in the country’s south and east, and several Ukrainian regions have been formally incorporated into the Russian state.

Mr. Rutte said Europe must ramp up its financial and military support for Ukraine as the U.S. steps back.

“We have to spend more, but not only because the U.S. expects that,” he said. “We have to spend more because we know the threat coming from Russia and from other adversaries is increasing.”

Mr. Rutte said increasing the defense industrial output of the NATO members would be on the agenda for the day’s ministerial discussion. Russia cranks out more military weapons and ammunition in three months than the entire alliance.

“This is a collective problem we have. We have fantastic defense industries, but we are not producing enough,” he said. “This is simply not sustainable. We have to ramp up the defense industries.”

Some analysts say Europe is not ready to be cut loose from its American military safety line. Max Bergmann, director of the Europe, Russia, and Eurasia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies said the Trump administration should first lay out a detailed and structured plan for transitioning the responsibility of European security to Europeans.

“European defense spending is inefficient across more than 25 bespoke militaries, all with their own military defense industrial complexes, all buying different equipment, and focused principally on their own parochial national defense instead of on Europe,” Mr. Bergmann said last month in an essay for the think tank.

“NATO provides some structure to the madness but does so premised on the United States serving as the backbone and vital organs, with Europe’s small ’bonsai’ militaries serving as the appendages,” he said.

Mr. Rutte tried to paper over the differences between the U.S. and other Ukrainian allies regarding the best way to end the war.

“There’s a clear convergence emerging,” he said. “We all want peace in Ukraine, sooner rather than later. We all want Ukraine to be in the best possible position when those talks start to make sure that they can be concluded successfully.”

Mr. Hegseth had some positive words to say about the U.S. commitment to NATO, telling fellow ministers Thursday, “America is right alongside our allies in NATO to ensure we remain strong and that this conflict comes to an end.”

He said the Trump administration is fully committed to the enduring partnership with NATO. However, he recalled former President Eisenhower’s post-World War II concern that Europe wasn’t doing enough to shoulder the burden for its own defense.

“This administration deeply believes in alliances,” Mr. Hegseth said. “But make no mistake, President Trump will not allow anyone to turn Uncle Sam into Uncle Sucker.”