Zelenskyy ready for talks but on one condition... in-person meet with Putin
Munich: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he will only agree to meet in-person with Russian leader Vladimir Putin after a common plan is negotiated with US President Trump.
Zelenskyy believes Trump is the key to ending the Russia-Ukraine conflict, and said the US president gave him his telephone number before Friday’s opening of the Munich Security Conference.
Trump upended years of steadfast US support for Ukraine this week following a phone call with Putin.
Zelenskyy was expected to meet with US Vice-President JD Vance later. Many observers, particularly in Europe, hope Vance will shed at least some light on Trump’s ideas for a negotiated settlement to the war.
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.
“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 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.
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 per cent of the nation’s GDP on defence.
“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. 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 sceptical of that aid and is expected to cut or otherwise limit it as negotiations get underway in the
coming days.
