Zelenskyy to Vance: Ukraine wants ‘security guarantees’ as Trump seeks to end Ukraine-Russia war

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MUNICH — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Friday during a meeting with U.S. Vice President JD Vance that his country wants “security guarantees” before any talks to end the Ukraine-Russia war.

Shortly before sitting down with Vance at the Munich Security Conference, Zelenskyy said he will only agree to meet in-person with Russian leader Vladimir Putin after a common plan is negotiated with U.S. President Donald Trump.

Trump upended years of steadfast U.S. support for Ukraine this week following a phone call with Putin, when he said the two leaders would likely meet soon to negotiate a peace deal. Trump later seemed to accept Zelenskyy’s demand that he, too, have a seat at the table.

Many observers, particularly in Europe, hope Vance will shed at least some light on Trump’s ideas for a negotiated settlement to the war.

Even after the Putin phone call, Zelenskyy said he believes Trump is the key to ending the war, and said the U.S president gave him his telephone number.

‘New sheriff in town’

In his own remarks to the conference, Vance lectured European officials on free speech and illegal migration on the continent, warning elected officials that they risk losing public support if they don’t quickly change course.

“The threat that I worry the most about vis-à-vis Europe is not Russia. It’s not China. It’s not any other external actor,” Vance said. “What I worry about is the threat from within — the retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values, values shared with the United States of America.”

He warned European officials: “If you’re running in fear of your own voters there’s nothing America can do for you.”

Vance’s speech, and his passing mention of the 3-year-old war in Ukraine, came at a time of intense concern and uncertainty over the Trump administration’s foreign policy.

“In Washington, there is a new sheriff in town. And under Donald Trump’s leadership, we may disagree with your views, but we will fight to defend your right to offer it in the public square,” Vance said to tepid applause.

The vice president also warned the European officials against illegal migration, saying that the electorate didn’t vote to open “floodgates to millions of unvetted immigrants” and referencing an attack Thursday in Munich where the suspect is a 24-year-old Afghan who arrived in Germany as an asylum-seeker in 2016.

The violence left more than 30 people injured and appears to have had an Islamic extremist motive.

NATO defence spending

Earlier Friday, Vance met separately with German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte, and British Foreign Secretary David Lammy. He used the engagements to reiterate the Republican 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% of the nation’s GDP on defense.

Chernobyl drone strike

Hours before Vance and Zelenskyy 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, Zelenskyy and the U.N. atomic agency said.

Zelenskyy 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.

Trump has been vague about his specific intentions for Ukraine and Russia — 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 U.S. 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% 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.”

Zelenskyy, in his own remarks during the conference, said the United States, including the Biden administration, never saw Ukraine as a NATO member.

Possible sanctions against Russia

Vance, in an interview with the Wall Street Journal, said that the U.S. 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.

Vance’s team later pushed back on the newspaper’s report.

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.

Dazio reported from Berlin. AP reporters Lolita C. Baldor and Zeke Miller in Washington, John Leicester in Paris, Jill Lawless in London and Illia Novikov in Kyiv, Ukraine, contributed.