{"id":227967,"date":"2026-10-19T01:34:02","date_gmt":"2026-10-19T01:34:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/treasury-secretary-refuses-to-say-if-the-u-s-sees-ukraine-as-an-ally-nbc-news\/"},"modified":"2026-10-19T01:34:02","modified_gmt":"2026-10-19T01:34:02","slug":"treasury-secretary-refuses-to-say-if-the-u-s-sees-ukraine-as-an-ally-nbc-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/treasury-secretary-refuses-to-say-if-the-u-s-sees-ukraine-as-an-ally-nbc-news\/","title":{"rendered":"Treasury secretary refuses to say if the U.S. sees Ukraine as an ally – NBC News"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Amid escalating tensions between President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Sunday dodged three times when asked whether Ukraine is an ally of the United States.
\u201cWe provide the three different things … to Ukraine, so that\u2019s what you do for an ally. We\u2019re not providing those to Russia,\u201d Bessent told NBC News\u2019 \u201cMeet the Press\u201d the second time he was asked whether the U.S. considers Ukraine an ally.
Asked for a third time, the treasury secretary simply said, \u201cI\u2019m not the secretary of state. I\u2019m not the president.\u201d
Earlier, Bessent said the U.S. supports Ukraine in three key ways, including providing intelligence, Starlink support and allowing NATO to purchase U.S. weapons to resell to Ukraine.
He then accused Europe of falling short in its support for Ukraine, saying: \u201cWhen President Zelenskyy asked for Patriots [missile systems], NATO \u2014 the European members of NATO \u2014 they have plenty of Patriots. Why aren\u2019t they forthcoming with the Patriots?\u201d
Bessent\u2019s comments came shortly after Zelenskyy appeared on the program and told \u201cMeet the Press<\/a>\u201d moderator Kristen Welker that it would be a \u201chistoric mistake\u201d for the U.S. to side with Russia in the ongoing war.
The Ukrainian president, who has had a sometimes tense and sometimes friendly relationship with the U.S. president, said of Trump that \u201cwe want to trust him\u201d and \u201cI hope that he will change his decisions.\u201d
The current tension between the U.S. and Ukrainian leaders comes after Trump last weekend said that Ukraine and Russia had agreed to an \u201cenergy ceasefire,\u201d a move that caught some European allies by surprise. For days, Zelenskyy halted Ukraine\u2019s strikes on Russian energy infrastructure but insisted that Russia was not abiding by the same agreement.
Days ago, Ukraine\u2019s military resumed its strikes on Russian oil refineries and accused the U.S. of withholding intelligence<\/a> about incoming Russian strikes<\/a> that the U.S. normally shares with Ukraine. Zelenskyy also accused tech mogul and Trump ally Elon Musk of limiting the country\u2019s access to Starlink, which Ukraine uses to track drones and defend itself.
In his \u201cMeet the Press\u201d interview, Zelenskyy said Starlink speed limitations are interfering with Ukrainian forces\u2019 ability to block drones and that he believes the decision to limit the speed was a \u201cmessage from American government.\u201d
The Ukrainian president also told \u201cMeet the Press\u201d that intelligence sharing from the U.S. was blocked for a period of time.
Trump denied that the U.S. had stopped sharing certain intelligence, and Starlink services later resumed at normal speed.
On Sunday, Bessent criticized Zelenskyy for publicly accusing the U.S. and Musk of limiting his resources in the war, saying: \u201cPresident Trump and Secretary [of State Marco] Rubio have categorically said that no one in the Trump administration did that, and I think it is very reckless for President Zelenskyy to make such a charge.\u201d
On Friday, the U.S. president also announced he would waive certain sanctions on Russia<\/a> that were recently approved by Congress in a bipartisan vote. Earlier in the month, Trump said he would allow Russia \u201cimmediately<\/a>\u201d to begin selling hundreds of thousands of tons of diesel on the global market.
On Sunday, Bessent denied that Trump lifted any sanctions, instead telling \u201cMeet the Press\u201d that the president wanted a 60-day pause \u201cso we can examine what\u2019s going on.\u201d
\u201cThe only thing that has been lifted is the diesel embargo,\u201d he added.
The treasury secretary also accused Zelenskyy of presenting a \u201cfalse binary\u201d about the war in his earlier interview.
\u201cPresident Trump has made it clear that he wants to end this war; that it must stop. And President Zelenskyy presented a false binary this morning that Ukraine must win,\u201d Bessent said. \u201cThe war must end, and that will be with some kind of a negotiated settlement. And President Trump is working on that every day.\u201d
Alexandra Marquez is a politics reporter for NBC News.
© 2026 NBCUniversal Media, LLC<\/p>\n

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For YouSettings news AlertsThere are no new alerts at this timeAmid escalating tensions between President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Sunday dodged three times when asked whether Ukraine is an ally of the United States.\u201cWe provide the three different things … to Ukraine, so that\u2019s what you do […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":227968,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-227967","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-us","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227967","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=227967"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227967\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/227968"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=227967"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=227967"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=227967"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}