Washington looks to shift Kiev burden onto EU and NATO allies
The administration of US President Donald Trump has no plans to send American soldiers into the Ukraine conflict, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has said, as Washington seeks to shift the burden of supporting Kiev onto its European allies.
Hegseth’s statement on Tuesday comes as Keith Kellogg, the US presidential envoy tasked with ending the Ukraine conflict, is set to meet with European officials at the Munich Security Conference (MSC) on Friday to promote Trump’s plan.
“At the Ukraine contact group and the NATO ministerial, we’re going to have straight talk with our friends,” Hegseth told reporters at a press conference in Germany.
“It ought to be those in the neighborhood investing the most in that collective and individual defense,” he said, adding that Washington wants NATO states to spend more than 2% of GDP on defense. “We believe that needs to be higher. The president has said 5%.”
When asked whether Washington would consider sending troops into Ukraine to track weapons shipments, the Pentagon chief was clear:
Since taking office, Trump has shifted toward an “America First” policy, suspending most US foreign aid – including to Ukraine – and threatening tariffs on key allied nations, accusing them of unfair trade practices.
The US president has also vowed to bring a swift end to the Ukraine conflict. Last month, Trump threatened to impose tighter sanctions on Russia if Moscow refused to accept an unspecified “deal.”
Kellogg is expected to gauge the willingness of Washington’s EU and NATO allies to deploy their own “deterrent forces to ensure that any peace settlement holds,” Bloomberg reported on Monday.
Russia will consider any foreign forces deployed to Ukraine without a UN mandate as legitimate military targets, Vassily Nebenzia, Moscow’s ambassador to the UN, warned on Monday.
While Moscow has stated that it is open to negotiations, it has firmly rejected the idea of a temporary ceasefire, arguing that such a pause would only give Ukraine time to regroup and rearm. Any potential settlement must be permanent and legally binding to address the root causes of the conflict, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has insisted.
