The absence of U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth at today’s meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group could be a result of either his personal initiative or the official stance of the White House on curbing support for Ukraine, which will have drastically different consequences for future cooperation.
This opinion was expressed by Oleksandr Kraiev, chief of the North America program at the Ukrainian Prism Foreign Policy Council, who spoke in a comment to Ukrinform.
The expert noted that, despite the fact that the current chief of the Pentagon is completely dependent on Donald Trump, he still allowed himself some initiative on several occasions. In particular, it was about suspending arms supplies to Ukraine. According to the American side, it was his own move, as was the delay in intelligence sharing with Kyiv, Kraiev noted.
“So the main question is whether this is Hegseth’s own initiative not to be at Ramstein, or is this the position of the White House, because we are not hearing any position from them at all now,” the international expert said.
“If this is the White House’s position, it means that the U.S. is really going to pull from the negotiations, generally reduce its presence in Europe and, in principle, trying to avoid any burdens now, which is very in Trump’s style. And if this is Hegseth’s own move, we can work with this: we can simply point out this inappropriateness and the fact that the Ukrainian special operation, Spiderweb, on the contrary, should contribute to increasing support, not reducing it,” Kraiev summarized.
As Ukrinform reported earlier, for the first time since the creation of the UDCG (the “Rammstein” format), U.S. Defense Secretary was not present at the meeting held on June 4.
