If Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s remarks Wednesday at NATO’s Brussels headquarters could be distilled into a two-word message for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, these would be the two: It’s time.

Donald Trump has been saying so for a while now, in so many words. On the campaign trail at a May 2023 CNN town hall, he said he could end the war “in 24 hours,” and he repeatedly noted what was obvious to the rest of us: Vladimir Putin would never have invaded Ukraine under his watch. Instead, Joe Biden proved that weakness is provocative, and here we are.

Trump also said this at that 2023 town hall: “They’re dying, Russians and Ukrainians. I want them to stop dying.” More recently, during a Q&A session at the World Economic Forum some 72 hours after his inauguration, he said this of the killing fields in Ukraine: “When you see pictures of the fields that I see? Nobody wants to see it. You’ll never be the same.”

Against this backdrop, Hegseth delivered the hard news: no NATO membership for Ukraine, and no chance of a peace deal that doesn’t include Russia keeping the historically and strategically vital Crimean Peninsula as well as the eastern Donbas region, whose inhabitants tend to be more friendly toward Russia. These are lands that Putin’s forces have occupied for around two years now.

“We want, like you, a sovereign and prosperous Ukraine,” said Hegseth, “but we must start by recognizing that returning to Ukraine’s pre-2014 borders is an unrealistic objective. Chasing this illusionary goal will only prolong the war and cause more suffering.”

Later, he “clarified” his remarks, saying, “All of that said, these negotiations are led by President Trump — everything is on the table in his conversations with Vladimir Putin and Zelensky. What he decides to allow or not allow is at the purview of the leader of the free world, of President Trump.”

Nevertheless, the outrage from the Trump haters was immediate. Alexander Vindman, that sniveling little Biden administration pipsqueak and Trump impeachment collaborator, called Hegseth’s comments a “complete capitulation” and a “major blow to U.S. national security” that will only embolden Putin.

We wonder: Just how much slaughter is this DC pencil-pusher willing to endure from the comfy confines of Washington? Or is he, like Biden, willing to support Ukraine “for as long as it takes,” even if it means leveling every large and medium-sized Ukrainian city and obliterating the gene pools of a generation of young Ukrainian and Russian men? As I wrote a week ago:

European land wars tend to be both long and awful, and this one is no exception. … If you think it’ll cost a lot to rebuild from the rubble of Gaza, take a look at this interactive map of destruction, which The New York Times describes as “a vast area with some 210,000 buildings leveled across a jagged, 800-mile frontline and beyond.”

Putin is the latest in a long line of Russian meatgrinders, and this is the way they do war: remorselessly and with little regard for human life. (In his magisterial work on the worst battle of history’s worst war, Stalingrad, historian Antony Beevor notes that the Soviet authorities executed some 13,500 of their own soldiers at Stalingrad. Did anyone really think plucky little Ukraine was going to win an attrition war against a country with 11 times zones, immeasurable natural resources, and a history of wrecking both Napoleon and Hitler?

This brings us to the latest effort by Trump to bring an end to the war. On Wednesday, he announced that he’d spoken with both Putin and Zelensky. As Trump put it:

I just spoke to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine. The conversation went very well. He, like President Putin, wants to make PEACE. We discussed a variety of topics having to do with the War, but mostly, the meeting that is being set up on Friday in Munich, where Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio will lead the Delegation. I am hopeful that the results of that meeting will be positive. It is time to stop this ridiculous War. … God bless the people of Russia and Ukraine!

The framework for the meeting is unclear, but as the BBC reports, Zelensky has warned that he won’t allow the U.S. and Russia to hammer out the terms without his country’s involvement. “We cannot accept it, as an independent country,” he said.

“Russia is going to be there with our people,” said Trump. “Ukraine is also invited, by the way. Not sure exactly who’s going to be there from any country but high-level people from Russia, from Ukraine, and from the United States.”

Ahead of the Munich meeting, Vance reportedly warned that sanctions or even military action could be on the table for Russia if Putin doesn’t agree to a deal that would guarantee peace for Ukraine.

For just short of three years now, the U.S has been involved in a long and very costly proxy war with Russia. Perhaps the time is now right to bring it to an end.