Pete Heget says the return to the borders of Ukraine for 2014 is “unrealistic”

Pete Heges, the US Secretary of Defense, said it was “unrealistic” to expect Ukraine to return to its borders before 2014 when Russia first took control of Crimea.

When he was a meeting of the defense contact group in Ukraine in Brussels, Heget said it would only be possible to establish a “lasting peace” with a “realistic assessment of the battlefield”.

The US Secretary of Defense also downplayed Ukraine’s proposals to join NATO and excluded the deployment of US troops in Ukraine in any future security agreements.

Kiev repeatedly calls for NATO membership and in the past rejects the territory of Kedins as part of the peace deal.

Heget, who was appointed Secretary of Defense after Donald Trump returned to the US Presidency in January, told the meeting of more than 40 countries related to Ukraine: “We want, like you, sovereign and prosperous Ukraine.

“But we have to start with the recognition that return to the borders of Ukraine before 2014 is an unrealistic purpose.

“The pursuit of this illusion goal will only prolong the war and cause more suffering.”

Russia annexed the Black Sea Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine in March 2014 and then supported pro -Russian separatists in an armed uprising against Kiev’s forces in Eastern Ukraine.

Moscow currently controls about one fifth of the territory of Ukraine, mainly to the east and south.

Heget said any lasting peace should include “stable security guarantees to ensure that the war will not start again.”

However, he said that “the United States does not believe that NATO membership for Ukraine is a realistic result of an agreed agreement.”

Instead, security guarantees must be supported by “capable European and non -European troops”.

“If these troops are located as peacekeepers in Ukraine at any time, they must be located as part of a mission that is not on NATO and they should not be covered by Article 5,” he said, referring to the clause for Mutual Defense of the Union.

Heget also told European NATO members that they would have to provide a lion’s share of future assistance to Kiev, warning that Washington “would no longer tolerate an unbalanced connection with its allies.

“The preservation of European security must be imperative for European NATO members,” Heget told a meeting of Ukraine supporters in Brussels. “Europe must provide a huge share of future deadly and non-rabbit assistance for Ukraine.”

The United States was the largest arms supplier in Ukraine.

But Trump is many times critical of the US help for Ukraine and said his priority is to end the war that began with the full -scale invasion of Russia in Ukraine in February 2022.

Earlier this week, Ukrainian President Volodimir Zelenski said he was ready to negotiate a peace deal with Russia, but wants his country to make it from a “position of force”.

Speaking with GuardianZelenski said that if Trump manages to bring Ukraine and Russia to the negotiating table, the Ukrainian president plans to offer Russia a straight exchange of territories by giving up the land that Kiev held in the Russian District of Kursk after the start of a surprising offensive six months.

“We will exchange one territory for another,” he said, but added that he did not know which part of Russia, Ukraine, would ask for in return.

“I don’t know, we’ll see. But all our territories are important, there is no priority,” he said.

He also said he would offer us companies profitable contracts to restore Ukraine in an obvious attempt to bring Trump to the side.

Last November, Zelenski and the US president spoke after Trump’s victory.

Zelenski said there was a “constructive exchange” with the then president and that he was sure that the war with Russia would “end early” than otherwise Trump becomes president.

But Trump’s democratic opponents accused him of being too close to Russian President Vladimir Putin and saying that his approach to war is a surrender to Ukraine, which in turn would threaten the whole of Europe.

In addition, it remains unclear whether a diplomatic decision of the war can be achieved, which would be acceptable for both parties.