leave today with more resolve than ever to support ukraine in its fight against russian aggression and atrocities. i know that we re all determined to do even more to better coordinate our efforts. so i was especially glad to hear general walters encourage us all to make more determined use of ucom s coordination mechanism. now, to ensure that we continue to build on our progress, we re going to extend this forum beyond today. i m proud to announce that today s gathering will become a monthly contact group on ukraine s self-defense. the contact group will be a vehicle for nations of good will to intensify our efforts, coordinate our assistance and focus on winning today s fight and the struggles to come.
united states, how nato has responded over the first 50 days of this war. well, it s astonishing. look, i was in political headquarters in nato for two years. it took us five years to make a simple decision. so now that s the nature of what happens. now we ve got a four-star air force general in europe, walters, who is supreme allied commander of europe nato, the u.s. ucom commander. but if he can t get something done through the political council, they brought in 15 other nation, a coalition of the willing, and that s how we ve been able to get all this incredible support to the ukrainians in a matter of weeks, not months or years. inside d.c., though, that process has also been amped up incredibly. i mean, we can go to endless
Gen. Christopher Cavoli, a Russian speaker who has led the Army in Europe for the past four years, has been tapped to serve as the next head of U.S. European Command, a report said.
are they really pulling back from kyiv? are they really moving their forces back to the east? and what does that portend because there is a danger of them having an enclosure, a pincer movement, on the ukrainian forces in the east that could really sort of make that an extremely difficult situation for the ukrainians. lots of questions. we had a briefing yesterday, both classified and unclassified with general walters who is the ucom commander of all the nato forces in europe. so i had a little practice yesterday on some of these questions. well, you also have access to information that we don t. are you satisfied not only with the pace of the u.s. getting what it can there but also the other nato allies especially those who have russian-made equipment, soviet-made equipment, the ukrainians are trained to use? is it moving fast enough? john, i think it is. it s been absolutely
announcements about moving permanent basing around or having different kinds of rotational deployments in europe? i m not going to get ahead of decisions that haven t been made. but i think it s safe to assume that given what russia has done over the last month and the ways in which the security environment on the european continent have changed, and i use that as past tense, not present tense, you can bet senior leaders here at the department are going to take a look at our european posture going forward. now, again, i can t tell you when a decision s going to be made one way or the other or what that s going to look like. but the secretary absolutely wants to keep an open mind about european posture going forward. clearly because of the acute threat of russia and clearly because of the way the security environment in europe has changed. so could it mean more troops more permanently based in europe? it could. but again, no decisions have been made right now. it sounds like this ha