JD Vance and Marco Rubio are set to speak with Zelenskyy on the sidelines of the Munich Security conference. They are expected to discuss Donald Trump’s push for Ukraine and Russia to begin negotiations
US Vice President JD Vance landed in Munich on Thursday, where he is set to hold critical talks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy about Russia’s nearly three-year war on Ukraine.
Vance, along with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, is due to sit down Friday with Zelenskyy on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference. They are expected to discuss President Donald Trump’s intensifying push for Ukraine and Russia to begin negotiations to end Europe’s deadliest conflict since World War II.
Vance, like Trump, has been a sharp critic of US allies’ defence spending, which the US administration considers too little.
“The Trump administration has been clear that we care a lot about Europe,” Vance said during a meeting this week with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. “But we also want to make sure that we’re engaged in a security partnership that’s both good for Europe and the United States.”
Trump on Wednesday spoke separately with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Zelenskyy. Trump said that he and Putin agreed it was time to “start negotiations immediately” to end the war.
Trump’s call with Putin came just hours after US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth said that NATO membership for Ukraine was unrealistic, and suggested Kyiv should abandon hopes of gaining back the territory it had lost to Russia since 2014. He said Ukraine should instead prepare for a negotiated peace settlement that will be be backed up by international peacekeeping troops.
Besides his talks with Zelenskyy, Vance is scheduled to deliver an address on Friday to the annual Munich Security Conference.
The war in Europe and NATO members’ defence spending are expected to be a major topic for world leaders gathering in Munich.
Ahead of the talks, Vance visited the Dachau concentration camp memorial, a powerful reminder of the Nazis’ World War II-era atrocities and the US and Western allies’ slowness to take decisive action to confront Adolf Hitler and the rise of his violent nationalist ideology.
Dachau was established in 1933, the year Hitler took power, as one of the first concentration camps. More than 200,000 people from across Europe were held at the camp, and more than 40,000 prisoners died there in horrendous conditions. US soldiers completed the liberation on April 29, 1945.
