'Not shaking hands': Pete Hegseth said to meet icy reception from Ukrainian counterpart
Ukraine's defense minister Rustem Umerov appeared to come away unimpressed from his meeting with U.S. defense secretary Pete Hegseth, according to a national security reporter.
The newly installed Pentagon chief held talks with U.K. defense secretary John Healey before a meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group at NATO headquarters in Brussels, and CNN's Natasha Bertrand read between the lines on official summaries issued about Hegseth's meeting with his counterparts.
"We are just getting word in that secretary Hegseth did just have his very first meeting with his Ukrainian counterpart Rustem Umerov here at NATO headquarters, just ahead of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, which is that forum that coordinates military assistance to Ukraine amongst roughly 50 countries," Bertrand said, "and it's really significant that they met here on the sidelines because, again, this is their first meeting. It is still completely unclear whether during this forum today Pete Hegseth is going to commit additional U.S. aid to Ukraine."
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"I should also note just the stark difference that we are seeing between the meeting that Hegseth had with Umarov and the meeting that Umarov had with the U.K. defense minister," Bertrand added. "In that meeting, the readout was very effusive. Umarov said that the U.K. was a strategic ally, he posted a photo of them shaking hands. The readout that we got from Umarov, the defense minister, following the meeting with Pete Hegseth was much more brief – it was a single sentence. It said that it was his first meeting with the new secretary of defense, and he posted a photo of them kind of just standing side by side, not shaking hands. So you already kind of get a sense that the U.K. appears to be kind of supplanting the U.S. here in terms of who is Ukraine's biggest western ally at this moment."
Foreign leaders wondered what Hegseth would request from E.U. officials on Ukraine's defense, CNN reported, while some NATO allies said they were wary of any statements that came from any U.S. officials besides president Donald Trump.
"The forum here today that is coordinating all of that military aid, that is going to be chaired by the U.K. and not by the U.S. for the very first time since that forum was founded," Bertrand said. "So all of this together really paints the picture of the U.S. wants to step back here, and they want Europe and NATO to step forward, they want them to spend more money. That is something that Pete Hegseth is expected to be telling allies here today, and they want them to provide more military assistance to the Ukrainians. They are getting the message here. They are, of course, trying to, you know, speak more with their European and NATO counterparts. But, at the same time, they're extremely wary of this, and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said many times that while he, of course, appreciates his European allies and he appreciates their willingness to provide some kind of security assurances to the Ukrainians during this brutal war."
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