WASHINGTON — This secretary’s secrecy seems to have no end.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin hosted this month’s meeting of the multinational Ukraine Contact Group from his home on Tuesday and skipped previously written comments acknowledging his recent health scare, which he scandalously hid from his colleagues in the Pentagon (and his boss in the White House) for days. .
“As you can see, today I will be joining from home,” Austin was supposed to say at the beginning of his opening speech at the meeting with the UCG, a group of more than 50 nations that meet monthly to discuss ways to support defense from Ukraine. needs. “I feel good and I look forward to returning to the Pentagon very soon. And I am grateful for all your warm wishes.”
Instead, he lashed out at what would have been his first live acknowledgment of his baffling decision not to tell President Biden or his Defense Department colleagues that he was hospitalized on Jan. 1 with complications from a prostatectomy performed on Jan. 22. December.
“We’re looking forward to starting this new year with new energy,” Austin said as he worked through the script he had prepared. “We are all here to reaffirm our support for a free, secure and sovereign Ukraine and to ensure that we continue to provide Ukraine with the capabilities it needs through the winter and beyond.”
Austin shocked Washington this month when it was revealed that he did not even tell his deputy, Kathleen Hicks, about his hospitalization when he transferred his secretarial authority to her from the hospital.
The typically portly, 270-pound secretary also appeared noticeably thinner in his first public speech since he shocked Washington by not telling President Biden that he was taken by ambulance to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center on Jan. 1.
Austin did not even tell his deputy, Kathleen Hicks, about his hospitalization when he transferred his secretarial authority to her from the hospital. It wasn’t until January 4 (three days after she took over) that Hicks, the White House and the rest of the Pentagon learned why she had done it.
The Pentagon chief returned to work virtually from Walter Reed on Jan. 5, advising the president on crucial defense matters, including the U.S.-British-led airstrike against Houthi terrorists in Yemen on Jan. 11, during most of of his two-week hospital stay. .
Ukrainian medics help a person injured in a Russian attack in Kharkiv on Tuesday. Global Images Ukraine via Getty Images
He was released last Monday and has since been working from home until he recovered enough to return to the Pentagon.
Before the Austin health crisis, UCG’s Tuesday meeting was scheduled to be held in person. Since its inception in May 2022, the group has alternated in-person and virtual meetings every month, although the latter was also held virtually.
Given Austin’s inability to travel, arrangements were made to hold the meeting online.
But Tuesday’s virtual session was different because the secretary appeared from his more than $3.5 million home in Virginia.
US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin appears virtually at a multinational meeting on Tuesday, omitting prepared remarks that allude to his recent health scare. AP
While his colleagues, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the Army, General CQ Brown, and the undersecretary of Defense for International Security Affairs, Celeste Wallander, called from the usual official configuration flanked by enormous flags of Ukraine and the United States in the meeting room Pentagon meetings, Austin awkwardly appeared from a stark white room that looked more like a closet than an office.
The secretary apparently attempted to make the makeshift ensemble look more official, but the efforts failed. He sat in front what looked like a large Department of Defense seal sticker and two miniature flags of the United States and Ukraine leaning on a photocopier in the corner.
Another thing Austin didn’t mention: the current fight over whether Congress will pass a supplemental funding bill that would provide Ukraine with tens of billions of dollars more in weapons as Russia’s war against the country nears its end. second anniversary next month.
A bloodied elderly woman receives help after a Russian attack in Kharkiv, Ukraine, on Tuesday. Pavlo Pakhomenko/NurPhoto/Shutterstock
Instead, he pressed other nations to provide more support to Ukraine, as the future of U.S. funding for the effort remains unclear.
“[Russian President Vladimir] Putin hopes that missiles and drones will demoralize the Ukrainian people and break the fighting spirit. of the Ukrainian army,” Austin said. “So I urge this group to dig deeper to provide Ukraine with more life-saving ground-based air defense systems and interceptors.”
But if Austin wants to win legislative support for additional funding for the United States, his recent scandal has done little to that effort.
Both Republicans and Democrats have called for his resignation over the ordeal.
He was invited to testify on the matter before the House Armed Services Committee on February 14.
The Pentagon has not yet said whether the secretary plans to comply with the request and appear at the hearing.
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Source: vtt.edu.vn