Sign in. It’s quick, free and it’s up to you.
An account is an optional way to support the work we do. Find out more.
LAST UPDATE | 14 Feb
US VICE PRESIDENT JD Vance has said Europe should “step up” on defence at a security conference in Munich where the new dynamic between the US and EU is casting a large shadow.
Speaking at the conference, Vance said that Europe should bolster its own defences to allow the US to focus on threats elsewhere in the world.
Vance also hit out at Europe on immigration, populist parties and free speech, and called Donald Trump the “new sheriff in town”.
“There is a new sheriff in town under Donald Trump’s leadership,” he said.
He also charged that “across Europe, free speech, I fear, is in retreat”, echoing Trump’s attacks on online “censorship”.
Vance urged European countries, including host country Germany, which faces elections on 23 February, to “change course” on immigration.
His speech came a day after a 24-year-old Afghan man was arrested in Munich over a car-ramming attack that wounded 36 people.
“How many times must we suffer these appalling setbacks before we change course and take our shared civilisation in a new direction?” he said.
“Why did this happen in the first place? It’s a terrible story but it’s one we’ve heard way too many times in Europe and unfortunately too many times in the United states as well.
“An asylum seeker, often a young man in his mid-20s already known to police, rams a car into a crowd and shatters a community.”
In an interview with the Wall Street Journal ahead of the conference, Vance accused European leaders of ‘ignoring’ voters on issues like migration.
But German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, opening the Munich Security Conference, said the Trump administration “has no regard for established rules”.
“The new American administration has a very different world view to ours,” Steinmeier said. “One that has no regard for established rules, partnership and established trust.”
“We cannot change that. We have to accept that and we can deal with it,” he said in unusually strong language at the event.
The Munich Security Conference kicked off today only days after Trump and Putin held watershed talks that have shaken Ukraine and America’s NATO allies, almost three years after Russia launched its full-scale invasion.
Trump said he had agreed with Putin to soon start Ukraine peace talks and exchange friendly visits.
Trump has effectively pulled the rug out from Ukraine’s negotiating position by conceding, via his Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, that restoring Ukraine’s territory to where it was before the first Russian invasion in 2014 is simply “not realistic”.
The new US administration signalled Ukraine would have to give up territory to Russia and that NATO membership for Kyiv was “impractical”. Hegseth suggested that Russia could keep Crimea as part of a deal and added that Europe cannot assume that US military presence on the continent “will last forever”.
EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen warned today that forcing Ukraine into a bad deal would harm US interests, as she urged President Donald Trump to work together for a “just peace”.
“A failed Ukraine would weaken Europe, but it would also weaken the United States,” von der Leyen said at the conference.
The Ukrainian presidency’s chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, has met Trump’s special envoy Keith Kellogg on the sidelines of conference.
“The main topic of conversation was the coordination of joint efforts to achieve a just and lasting peace” in Ukraine, Yermak said in a post on social media.
Vance, ahead of his speech in Munich this afternoon, sought to dampen European fears about the negotiations, telling the Wall Street Journal that “the president is not going to go in this with blinders on”.
“He’s going to say, ‘Everything is on the table, let’s make a deal,’” Vance added, stressing that there are economic and even “military tools of leverage.”
He said that European allies should “of course” join peace negotiations, among concerns that they would be excluded by the US and Russia.
He added it was too early to say how much of Ukraine’s territory would remain in Russian hands or what security guarantees the United States and other Western allies could offer Kyiv.
“There are any number of formulations, of configurations, but we do care about Ukraine having sovereign independence,” he said.
Zelenskyy warned world leaders “against trusting Putin’s claims of readiness to end the war” yesterday, saying that he wanted the United States to agree a “plan to stop Putin” before any negotiations.
In an apparent swipe at Trump, Keir Starmer told Zelenskyy in a phone call this morning that the UK was committed “to Ukraine being on an irreversible path to NATO”.
“The prime minister reiterated the UK’s commitment to Ukraine being on an irreversible path to NATO, as agreed by allies at the Washington summit last year,” a spokeswoman in Starmer’s Downing Street office said in a pointed message to the US.
Starmer was also “unequivocal” that there could be no talks about Ukraine, without Ukraine, the spokesperson said.
Taoiseach Micheál Martin, who is also in attendance today, stressed that he would be voicing Ireland’s “steadfast support for Ukraine”.
Echoing Macron’s comments, Martin said that “there can be no agreement on Ukraine without Ukraine”.
“It is more important than ever to stress our strong commitment to helping them achieve a just and sustainable peace based on the principles of the UN Charter,” Martin said.
“The terms and conditions for any peace agreement must be in line with these principles.”
Additional reporting from AFP
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
have your say