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MUNICH — U.S. President Donald Trump’s insistence that Ukraine won’t join NATO was “clumsy” and a “mistake,” German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said at the Munich Security Conference today.
Earlier this week, Trump as well as senior U.S. officials, including Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, said Kyiv won’t be joining the defense alliance and shouldn’t expect to return its territory to pre-2014 borders. Hegseth has since tried to row his remarks back slightly.
Meanwhile, Trump has effectively launched bilateral talks with Vladimir Putin on a peace deal — to the consternation of Kyiv and European allies.
“The regrettable thing … is that the Trump administration has, in my opinion, unnecessarily taken two important negotiating items off the table,” Pistorius said. “In my view, it would have been much better to only talk about Ukraine’s possible NATO membership and possible territorial changes at the negotiating table.”
Pistorius said he would meet Keith Kellogg, the retired U.S. general who is Trump’s special envoy to Ukraine and Russia, later today.
Calling for “cool heads,” Pistorius said that European allies shouldn’t be shut out of any peace talks.
“Without Europe’s participation in the negotiations … it is difficult to imagine that Europeans should then secure this peace afterwards without having been involved in the negotiations to bring about peace together,” he said.
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