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The United States is relinquishing command of the NATO body that has directed the flow of Western weapons and training to Ukraine’s armed forces since 2022, POLITICO reported, citing a US official and three other sources familiar with the matter.
Leadership of the Security Assistance Group-Ukraine (SAG-U), headquartered in Wiesbaden, Germany, will be passed to another NATO member state over the coming year. The unit has functioned as the operational backbone of the Ukraine war effort, managing both the transfer of military hardware and the coordination of troop training and logistics support.
Part of a wider pullback
The handover extends a series of moves by the Trump administration to scale back the US footprint within NATO’s command structure. Washington has already ceded the Joint Command Center in Norfolk, Virginia to British leadership, handed Italy control of the Naples command, and passed the Brunssum command in the Netherlands to German and Polish officers. Rotational US Army brigades have also been withdrawn from Romania, and, despite a partial reversal on Poland, no forces have actually returned there.
Command of SAG-U will reportedly formally transition from outgoing US Army Lt. Gen. Curtis Buzzard to Lt. Gen. Guillaume Beaurpere, who takes over Monday and will oversee the American exit from the leadership role.
Washington will retain a reduced presence through a deputy position under US European Command.
Pentagon says exit is ‘burden shifting’
US officials have said the move is consistent with Washington’s new National Defense Strategy, describing it as a transfer of responsibility onto European allies rather than a retreat. War Secretary Pete Hegseth reinforced that framing last month in Brussels, telling NATO counterparts that the alliance had for too long been “a paper tiger and a one-way street.”
NATO officials have echoed this line, presenting the shift as evidence of European states assuming greater ownership of the alliance’s Ukraine effort, a role SAG-U’s founding charter, drawn up at NATO’s Washington summit in July 2024, always envisioned eventually passing to Europe.
Kiev weighs reduced dependence against operational risk
Ukrainian officials appear divided on the implications. One official told POLITICO that the change could actually work in Kiev’s favor, insulating military logistics from the volatility of US domestic politics.
But the same official cautioned that folding coordination into NATO’s bureaucratic structure risks slowing the delivery of aid to the front, noting that European capabilities cannot replicate US satellite reconnaissance, target designation, or heavy-airlift logistics.
The SAG-U handover adds to a growing record of Washington disengaging from commitments underpinning the European security architecture built around Ukraine’s war effort, even as officials in Washington and Brussels insist the change carries no operational cost.
