WASHINGTON: US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Thursday dismissed as \u201cgarbage\u201d accusations that Washington had taken a pro-Russia stance, saying President Donald Trump was pursuing a peaceful end to Russia\u2019s three-year-old invasion of Ukraine.
\nTrump has piled pressure on Ukraine, pausing all US military and intelligence assistance to Kyiv, as his administration pushes for a negotiated solution to the biggest conflict in Europe since World War Two.
\nTrump and his advisers, including Hegseth, have also declined to brand Russia as the aggressor.
\n\u201cThe press is interested in narratives. Our president is interested in peace. So we will get characterized one way or another: \u2018Oh, your stance is pro-Russia or pro-\u2019 … it\u2019s all garbage,\u201d Hegseth told reporters.
\n\u201cThe President got elected to bring peace in this conflict, and he is working with both sides in a way that only President Trump can … to bring them to the table to end the killing.\u201d
\nHegseth spoke alongside British Defense Secretary John Healey, who aimed to discuss a peace plan for Ukraine during a meeting at the Pentagon on Thursday.
\n\u201cIt\u2019s the detail of those discussions which are rightly behind the scenes that the defense secretary and I will now pursue this afternoon,\u201d Healey said.
\nOver the weekend, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov praised Trump\u2019s \u201ccommon sense\u201d aim to end the war, while accusing European powers which have rallied around Kyiv of seeking to prolong the conflict.
\nTrump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky had acrimonious talks at the White House on February 28 but since then the two sides have resumed work on a revenue-sharing minerals deal.
\nAt his speech to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday, Trump said he had received a letter from Zelensky in which the Ukrainian leader said he was \u201cready to come to the negotiating table as soon as possible.\u201d
\nTrump\u2019s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, said on Thursday he is in discussions with Ukraine for a peace agreement framework to end hostilities with Russia and that a meeting is planned next week with the Ukrainians in Saudi Arabia.
\n\u201cWe\u2019re now in discussions to coordinate a meeting with the Ukrainians,\u201d Witkoff told reporters at the White House. He said it would likely be in Riyadh or Jeddah.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
WASHINGTON: US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Thursday dismissed as \u201cgarbage\u201d accusations that Washington had taken a pro-Russia stance, saying President Donald Trump was pursuing a peaceful end to Russia\u2019s three-year-old invasion of Ukraine. Trump has piled pressure on Ukraine, pausing all US military and intelligence assistance to Kyiv, as his administration pushes for a …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":78078,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-78059","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78059","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78059"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78059\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78080,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78059\/revisions\/78080"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/78078"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78059"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78059"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78059"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}