MUNICH (AP) — Vice President JD Vance lectured European officials on free speech and illegal migration on the continent during his remarks Friday before the Munich Security Conference, warning elected officials that they risk losing public support if they don’t quickly change course.
“If you’re running in fear of your own voters there’s nothing America can do for you,” the vice president said.
Vance’s speech, and his passing mention of the 3-year-old Russia-Ukraine conflict, 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.
Vance is expected to meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy 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 following a phone call between Trump and Russian leader Vladimir Putin this week.
Vance, in his speech, said the administration “believes we can come to a reasonable settlement between Russia and Ukraine.”
NATO defense 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 defense. 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.
“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,” Vance told Rutte.
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 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.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio was expected to join Vance and Zelenskyy. He 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 and was expected to arrive in time for the meeting.
Trump, who upended years of steadfast U.S. 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 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.
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“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 Zelenskyy on Friday that Ukraine must be allowed to join NATO.
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.
Zelenskyy won’t accept agreements made without Ukraine
The U.S. reassurances may have somewhat allayed Zelenskyy’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,” Zelenskyy 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.
