Senator Roger Wicker, Republican of Mississippi and the chairman of the panel that oversees the Pentagon, criticized Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth for recent remarks about Ukraine’s future, saying the newly confirmed secretary made a “rookie mistake” by ruling out a return to the country’s prewar borders.
Mr. Wicker, who helped salvage Mr. Hegseth’s chances of confirmation last month amid Republican resistance, made the remarks in interviews with Politico, in response to comments Mr. Hegseth made earlier this week during a trip to Brussels. The secretary said that NATO membership for Ukraine was unrealistic and that the country should abandon its hopes of reclaiming territory taken by Russia.
The comments prompted immediate backlash, forcing Mr. Hegseth to clarify his position a day later, when he told reporters that “everything is on the table” in any peace negotiation between Russia and Ukraine.
“I was disturbed by it,” Mr. Wicker said of Mr. Hegseth’s original comments.
The senator, who has earned a reputation as one of the most outspoken advocates of military aid to Ukraine, said he was “heartened” by Mr. Hegseth’s correction, but not entirely placated.
“He’s going to be a great defense secretary, although he wasn’t my choice for the job,” Mr. Wicker said during the live-streamed interview on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference. “But he made a rookie mistake in Brussels.”
The senator said he was encouraged that “the secretary walked that part back — the NATO part.”
But Mr. Wicker described Mr. Hegseth’s public remarks as a diplomatic misstep born of inexperience, saying that it is common knowledge that officials should not “say before your first meeting what you will agree to and what you won’t.”
And he drew an unflattering comparison between the statements by Mr. Hegseth, a former “Fox & Friends” weekend host, and the rhetoric of the right-wing commentator Tucker Carlson, who has faced sharp criticism for his sympathetic treatment of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.
“I don’t know who wrote the speech,” Mr. Wicker said. “It is the kind of thing Tucker Carlson could have written — and Carlson is a fool.”
The episode underscored the broader uncertainty and Republican divide surrounding U.S. policy on Ukraine, particularly as President Trump pressed for a quick end to the war and continued to cast doubt on the feasibility of Ukraine’s NATO bid.
Republicans have traditionally supported a muscular foreign policy approach in which the United States projected its power around the world to preserve democracies and to uphold global stability. That is starkly at odds with Mr. Trump’s “America First” philosophy. The conflict in Ukraine has dramatized that split, with a growing number of Republicans siding with Mr. Trump that the United States should not back Kyiv as it seeks to hold off Mr. Putin.
Mr. Wicker is not among them. As he spoke in Munich, the Mississippi Republican sported the same dual U.S.-Ukrainian flag lapel pin that he wore during Mr. Hegseth’s confirmation hearings, which prompted online backlash from some.
Speaking to reporters on Thursday, Mr. Trump appeared to have dismissed the idea of NATO membership for Ukraine, calling it “unlikely or impractical.” The president has also mused anew about withdrawing the United States from the international security alliance over cost concerns.
