Vice President J.D. Vance met Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky in Munich on Friday evening at a critical moment in the war against Russia and as Washington pushes for a negotiated peace deal.
Zelensky has made clear he will not meet Putin until he has made a plan with President Donald Trump.
That gave Friday’s meeting an extra frisson of tension, as the pair met on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference, in a basement room of the hotel where Vance and the U.S. delegation were staying.
Vance said the goal was to find a ‘lasting, durable peace’ but Zelensky laid out his bottom line.
‘We want, really, we want this very much, but we need real security guarantees,’ he said, referencing requests that the U.S. and the European Union underwrite any peace deal.
And he said they needed to come together to stop the Russian war machine.
‘We need to speak more, to work more and to prepare the plan … how to stop Putin,’ he said.
Earlier, in a speech to the conference, he said Trump had given him his cellphone number but added that the U.S. president had no plan to end the three-year war.
Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky said ‘We need real security guarantees’ after his meeting with Vice President J.D. Vance in Munich on Friday evening
Vance was flanked by Keith Kellogg, Trump’s envoy, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio
The meetings comes amid mixed messages from Washington.
Trump has led a softening of the U.S. position on Ukraine and held a 90-minute call with Putin on Wednesday.
He called for Russia to be readmitted to the G7 group of highly industrialized nations and suggested that he trusted Putin to deliver on a deal.
It triggered pushback from European leaders who said Zelensky must be part of any talks.
Vance offered a more robust line when he was interviewed Thursday by the Wall Street Journal, suggesting military force could be used to persuade Russian President Vladimir Putin to reach a deal.
‘There are economic tools of leverage, there are of course military tools of leverage’ the U.S. could use, Vance told the newspaper.
Vance gave the interview ahead of a major speech at the Munich Security Conference, at a moment of world peril, as the established world order is in danger of crumbling under Putin’s assault on Ukraine.
It overshadowed the rest of the days events.
Vice President J.D. Vance took European leaders to task in their own back yard with an fiery speech at the Munich Security Conference on Friday afternoon
Vance’s audience of European VIPs were lectured on democracy and freedom of speech
He used the speech to lecture European leaders on freedom of speech and said they must do more to pay for their own defense.
‘Europe faces many challenges, but the crisis this continent faces right now, the crisis I believe we all face together, is one of our own making,’ he said.
‘If you’re running in fear of your own voters, there is nothing America can do for you, nor, for that matter, is there anything that you can do for the American people who elected me and elected President Trump.’
If his audience of European VIPs had expected Vance to discuss the future of the war in Ukraine, outlining Donald Trump’s peace plan, they were in for a shock.
Some shifted in their seats as he attacked European politicians head on.
He accused European Union officials of ‘canceling elections and asked whether ‘we’re holding ourselves to an appropriately higher standard’.
