For the first time since the US created an international group to coordinate military aid to Ukraine three years ago, America’s Pentagon chief will not be in attendance when more than 50 other defense leaders meet Wednesday, June 4. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who returned from a national security conference in Singapore on Sunday, will not arrive in Brussels until Wednesday evening, after the Ukraine Defense Contact Group’s meeting is over.

It is the latest in a series of steps that the US has taken to distance itself from the Ukraine war effort. And it comes on the heels of French President Emmanuel Macron’s warning at the security conference last weekend that the US and others risk a dangerous double standard if their concentration on a potential conflict with China is done at the cost of abandoning Ukraine.

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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      27 days ago

      Do you really want Hegseth getting involved? Man’s got the Sidam touch in a way even other members of the Trump team can’t help but notice.

      Given the abysmal OpSec he’s demonstrated, seems like he’d be more harm than good.

  • FuglyDuck@lemmy.world
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    27 days ago

    Wouldn’t want the rest of the world to know he drinks more Putinka than the russian generals do.

  • Raltoid@lemmy.world
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    27 days ago

    It being malicious seems like an obvious answer, but I seriously would not be surprised if it was a booking error or some sort of hubris that they’d wait for him.

  • DarylDutch@lemmy.world
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    27 days ago

    Of course he does. They scheduled it on tequila thursdays, his religious pilgrimage to the bottom of a bottle comes first.

  • oh_@lemmy.world
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    27 days ago

    He is too busy renaming bases / ships after confederate generals, putting on makeup, chatting it up with his signal bros.

  • DelnitaCrane@lemmy.world
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    27 days ago

    He’s too busy brainstorming new names for the USNS Harriet Tubman because her actions and beliefs that “slavery is bad, actually” apparently don’t align with the current administration’s ideology. But why am I’m repeating things y’all already know? Everyone’s on his Signal chat, of course.

    • Ledericas@lemm.ee
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      26 days ago

      hes brainstorming how to get drunk faster, because he built up a tolerance to heavy drinker.