The future of Ukraine is the top item on the agenda at the Munich Security Conference following a phone call between US President Donald Trump and Russian leader Vladimir Putin this week, when they pledged to work together to end the 3-year-old Russia-Ukraine conflict.
Vance is expected to meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky later Friday for talks that many observers, particularly in Europe, hope will shed at least some light on Trump’s ideas for a negotiated settlement to the war.
German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier told the conference that everyone “wants this war to end.” But “how this war ends,” he said, "will have a lasting influence on our security order and on the position of power of Europe and America in the world.”
NATO defence spending
Vance started his day in Munich, meeting separately with Steinmeier, NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte, and British Foreign Secretary David Lammy. He used the engagements to reiterate the Republican Trump administration's call for NATO members to spend more on defence. Currently, 23 of NATO’s 32 member nations are hitting the Western military alliance’s target of spending 2 percent of the nation's GDP on defence.
“NATO is a very important military alliance, of course, that we’re the most significant part of,” Vance told Rutte. "But we want to make sure that NATO is actually built for the future, and we think a big part of that is ensuring that NATO does a little bit more burden sharing in Europe, so the United States can focus on some of our challenges in East Asia.”
Rutte said he agreed that Europe needs to step up. “We have to grow up in that sense and spend much more,” he said.
Chernobyl drone strike
Hours before Vance and Zelensky were set to meet, a Russian drone with a high-explosive warhead hit the protective confinement shell of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in the Kyiv region, the Ukrainian president said. Radiation levels have not increased, Zelensky and the UN atomic agency said.
Zelensky in Munich told reporters that he thinks the Chernobyl drone strike is a “very clear greeting from Putin and Russian Federation to the security conference.”
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Friday denied Ukraine's claims. And Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said the Munich organizers haven’t invited Russia for several years, a decision she called “strange and politicized.”
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio was supposed to join Vance and Zelensky but was delayed when his Air Force plane had to return to Washington after developing a mechanical problem en route to Munich. He took a different aircraft, but it was unclear whether he would arrive in time for the meeting.
Trump, who upended years of steadfast US support for Ukraine during his call with Putin on Wednesday, has been vague about his specific intentions — other than suggesting that a deal will likely result in Ukraine being forced to cede territory that Russia has seized since it annexed Crimea in 2014.
“The Ukraine war has to end,” Trump told reporters Thursday. “Young people are being killed at levels that nobody’s seen since World War II. And it’s a ridiculous war.”
Ukraine's bid to join NATO
Trump’s musings have left Europeans in a quandary, wondering how — or even if — they can maintain the post-WWII security that NATO afforded them or fill the gap in the billions of dollars of security assistance that the Democratic Biden administration provided to Ukraine since Russia’s February 2022 invasion.
Trump has been highly skeptical of that aid and is expected to cut or otherwise limit it as negotiations get underway in the coming days.
Both Trump and US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth this week undercut Ukraine’s hopes of becoming part of NATO, which the alliance said less than a year ago was “irreversible,” or of getting back its territory captured by Russia, which currently occupies close to 20 percent including Crimea.
“I don’t see any way that a country in Russia’s position could allow ... them to join NATO,” Trump said Thursday. “I don’t see that happening.”
But British Prime Minister Keir Starmer told Zelensky on Friday that Ukraine must be allowed to join NATO.
Trump in recent days said he wants to reach an agreement with Ukraine to gain access to the country’s rare earth materials as a condition for continuing US support for Ukraine’s defense against Russia. He confirmed earlier this week that aides were working toward striking such a deal.
Asked Friday if a deal might be completed in Munich, Vance responded, “We'll see.”
Possible sanctions against Russia
Vance, in an interview with the Wall Street Journal, said that the US would hit Moscow with sanctions and potentially military action if Putin won’t agree to a peace deal with Ukraine that guarantees Kyiv’s long-term independence.
The warning that military options “remain on the table” was striking language from a Trump administration that’s repeatedly underscored a desire to quickly end the war.
Zelensky won't accept agreements made without Ukraine
The US reassurances may have somewhat allayed Zelensky’s fears, although they will not replace any lost military or economic support that President Joe Biden's administration had provided.
The Ukrainian leader conceded Thursday that it was “not very pleasant” that Trump spoke first to Putin. But he said the main issue was to “not allow everything to go according to Putin’s plan.”
“We cannot accept it, as an independent country, any agreements (made) without us,” Zelensky said as he visited a nuclear power plant in western Ukraine.
European turning point
The track Trump is taking also has rocked Europe, much as his dismissive comments about France and Germany did during his first term.
French Deputy Foreign Minister Benjamin Haddad described Europe as being at a turning point, with the ground shifting rapidly under its feet, and said Europe must wean itself off its reliance on the United States for its security. He warned that handing a victory to Russia in Ukraine could have repercussions in Asia, too.
“I think we’re not sufficiently grasping the extent to which our world is changing. Both our competitors and our allies are busy accelerating,” Haddad told broadcaster France Info on Thursday.
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