Pete Hegseth "is going to be a great defense secretary," a Republican senator said Friday at the Munich Security Conference. But Hegseth did not fulfill Roger Wicker's hopes at the start of his first overseas trip in office, Politico reports, especially in saying Ukraine should not expect to return to its pre-2014 borders when the fighting with Russia stops. "He made a rookie mistake in Brussels," Wicker said, "and he's walked back some of what he said but not that line." Hegseth countered that he didn't walk anything back.
"I stand by the comments," Hegseth said in a press conference in Warsaw with the defense minister of Poland. The new defense secretary had addressed European and Ukrainian security issues on a stop in Brussels on Wednesday to meet with NATO and Ukrainian defense ministers. "My job today and in Brussels was to introduce realism to the conversation," Hegseth said Friday, per Axios. "The reality that returning to 2014 borders as part of a negotiated settlement is unlikely. The reality of US troops in Ukraine is unlikely. The reality of Ukraine membership in NATO as a part of negotiated settlement, unlikely."
Wicker, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, is a solid supporter of Ukraine and said he was disturbed by other parts of Hegseth's comments. "I don't know who wrote the speech—it is the kind of thing Tucker Carlson could have written, and Carlson is a fool," Wicker told Politico. The Mississippi senator was baffled about why Hegseth would reject Ukraine's priorities out of hand. "Everybody knows ... you don't say before your first meeting what you will agree to and what you won't agree to," he said. Hegseth did add Friday that he "would never put constraints around what the president of the United States would be willing to negotiate with the sovereign leaders of both Russia and Ukraine." (More Pete Hegseth stories.)
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