US says Ukraine should quit NATO and Crimea if it wants peace

BrusselsThe Donald Trump administration is doubling down on pressure on Volodymyr Zelensky. After the US president said on Tuesday that Ukraine "could one day be Russian" if it does not reach an agreement with the Kremlin, on Wednesday US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said at a NATO ministerial meeting that in order to achieve peace "we must begin to recognize that it is an objective" that Russian troops invaded Crimea and part of the east of the Ukrainian country. "Pursuing this illusory objective will only prolong the war and cause even more suffering," the US leader insisted at the summit of the Atlantic Alliance that is being held this Wednesday and Thursday in Brussels.

In addition, Hegseth has assured that as a result of a peace agreement between Moscow and Kiev, Ukraine's accession to NATO cannot be agreed, which is one of Zelensky's major demands. In fact, the Atlantic Alliance, which is de facto controlled by the Pentagon, has agreed on more than one occasion that Ukraine's path to membership in the world's largest military entity is "irreversible." Now, however, the Trump administration is putting the brakes on it and opening the door for the first time to accepting one of the main demands of Vladimir Putin's regime: that Ukraine not join NATO under any circumstances. "The United States does not believe that Ukraine's entry [into the Atlantic Alliance] is a realistic outcome of an agreement," the US Secretary of Defense General stressed.

Hegseth's statements will have fallen like a bucket of cold water in Kiev. This Wednesday Zelensky insisted that security guarantees for a potential ceasefire or a peace agreement with Putin must at all costs include the involvement of the United States. "Security guarantees without America are not real security guarantees," the Ukrainian president stressed in an interview with the newspaper The Guardian.

In this regard, the US Secretary of Defense has also ruled out the deployment of US or NATO peacekeeping troops on Ukrainian territory to ensure compliance with a possible understanding between the two parties. "I will be clear: as a guarantee of security, we will not send troops to Ukraine," said Hegseth. However, despite US opposition, the idea of sending troops to Ukrainian territory to ensure compliance with a ceasefire or peace agreement is gaining ground among European allies. However, according to diplomatic sources, some European countries are still reluctant and are only willing if the United States were also involved in the operation.

The Pentagon chief's words come at a key moment in contacts between the United States and Ukraine on the war. The Trump administration admitted

On the other hand, Hegseth again put pressure on NATO's European allies to multiply their military spending and stressed that he agrees with Trump when he says that all NATO states should allocate at least 5% of their product to defense. Along the same lines, the organization's general secretary, Mark Rutte, completely took up the gauntlet of the Republican leader and again bet in a press conference this Wednesday to increase the minimum of this rate, which is now at 2%.

In fact, since Trump won the elections, Rutte has been pushing to increase the minimum percentage that NATO states must spend on defense, and for days he has been saying that 2% "is not enough" and that it should be raised to at least 3%. However, it must be remembered that there are still a dozen allies that do not even reach this minimum. Spain, for example, is currently at 1.28% and does not expect to reach this rate until 2029.