Pete Hegseth, the new US defence secretary, has said it is “unrealistic” to expect Ukraine to return to its pre-2014 borders, when Russia first captured Crimea and Moscow-backed proxies pushed into eastern Ukraine.
Speaking at a defence summit in Brussels, Hegseth said it would only be possible to establish a “durable peace” with a “realistic assessment of the battlefield”.
During an uncompromising speech, he also downplayed the prospect of Ukraine joining Nato, ruled out deploying US troops to Ukraine under any future security arrangement and said European nations needed to spend much more on defence.
The Nato military alliance has previously pledged Kyiv an “irreversible path” to membership.
Hegseth’s comments will be met with dismay in Ukraine – which has repeatedly called for Nato membership and has rejected ceding territory as part of any peace deal – and will be welcomed by Moscow.
The new US defence secretary’s remarks are also the clearest indication yet of the Trump administration’s position on the Ukraine war and what a peace plan to end the conflict could involve.
There will also be nervousness across the continent after Hegseth suggested the US would significantly scale back its support for Ukraine, insisting that European nations would now need to provide the “overwhelming share” of aid to Kyiv.
Hegseth, who was appointed defence secretary after Donald Trump returned to the US presidency in January, was speaking at the Ukraine Defence Contact Group, a meeting of more than 40 countries allied to Ukraine.
Russia annexed the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea from Ukraine in March 2014 and then backed pro-Russian separatists in an armed insurgency against Kyiv’s forces in eastern Ukraine.
Moscow currently controls around a fifth of Ukraine’s territory, mainly in the east and south.
