Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has trained with U.S. Marines in Germany ahead of his first NATO meeting. Hegseth is currently on a week-long trip that includes visits to Germany, Belgium and Poland, after he narrowly made it through the Senate's confirmation process in which Vice President JD Vance had to cast a tie-breaking vote.

While acknowledging that Ukraine would need security guarantees, Hegseth said that “the United States does not believe that NATO membership for Ukraine is a realistic outcome of a negotiated settlement.” Instead, he continued, any peacekeeping troops “should be deployed as part of a non-NATO mission.”

Defense Secretary Hegseth said it was “unrealistic” to aim for a return to Ukraine’s borders as they were before 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth delivered a blunt message to NATO allies Wednesday: U.S. troops will not be part of any future peace-keeping mission in Ukraine. Nor should NATO's Article 5 protections — under which the U.