Ukrainian leader appears reassured after Munich bilateral, having feared he could be bounced into peace negotiations. Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said during a meeting with the US vice-president, JD Vance, that his country wants “security guarantees” and a joint US-Ukrainian peace plan before he enters into any talks with Vladimir Putin to end the war in his country. Both men agreed after an hour-long discussion on Friday on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference that further talks were required to see if they could reach a common understanding.
The Ukrainian president seemed satisfied that with the support of European leaders he had managed to force the Trump administration to adopt a more considered and collaborative approach, after he was left reeling this week by a series of unilateral unconditional concessions Trump appeared to be offering to the Russian president. Zelenskyy also seemed to have slowed the rush to staging imminent talks with Putin. He said that when he met his Russian counterpart – whom he called a liar – nothing would be kept off the table.
Both men said they had had a “good” conversation and would meet again for talks in future. “Our first meeting, not last, I’m sure,” Zelenskyy said. Vance said more talks would be held “in the days, weeks and months to come” – a longer timetable that will reassure Zelenskyy, who feared he might be bounced into formal negotiations. Vance, who was flanked by the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, and the special presidential envoy for Russia and Ukraine, Keith Kellogg, refused to go into the details of any peace plan, saying: “I want to preserve the optionality here for the negotiators and our respective teams to bring this thing to a responsible close.”.
Earlier in the day European leaders claimed to have won US assurances that Ukraine’s leadership would be fully consulted over any peace talks with Russia and that the sovereignty of Ukraine would be protected, as they sought to ease fears that Trump was on the brink of abandoning Kyiv. A strong show of European unity in support of Ukraine at the Munich conference, coupled with private assurances from key figures in the Trump administration that decisions were not imminent, went some way towards dampening intense concern and uncertainty over the Trump administration’s foreign policy.
European leaders were furious this week when the US defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, ruled out Ukraine ever joining Nato and said the country would have to abandon most of its territory occupied by Russia. Shortly after Trump unexpectedly announced that he had already spoken to Putin for more than an hour and would begin peace talks, Hegseth also said no US troops would contribute to any European peacekeeping force in Ukraine in the event of an agreed ceasefire.
During his speech to the conference – an annual gathering of international security policy decision-makers – which he made before the Vance meeting, Zelenskyy said he believed the US president was the “key” to ending the conflict and that Trump had given him his phone number. The European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, urged Americans to realise that failure for Ukraine would not only weaken Europe, it would weaken the US too. Ukraine wanted a peace that was “just and lasting, so the horrors of the last years are not revisited again”, she said.
She tried to reassure delegates that some voices in the often chaotic Trump administration still recognised that Ukraine’s long-term security was a crucial objective for the whole of the western alliance. Offering an olive branch, she told the conference: “We need to be honest here, and we need to avoid outrage and outcry. Because if we listen to the substance of the remarks, we not only understand where they are coming from but recognise there are some remarks we can agree on.”.
Although European leaders still talk about Ukraine joining Nato, Zelenskyy has long recognised that objections from the US and Russia make it a distant prospect. David Lammy, the UK foreign secretary, speaking after meeting Vance, said of prospective peace talks that “there was an agreement that Zelenskyy and the Ukrainians have to be part of that negotiated deal”. UK defence sources said there was little sign that Trump would be able to secure a quick deal with Putin since Russia believes battlefield gains will increase as Ukrainian morale crumbles faced by the divisions in the western alliance.
Zelenskyy tried to shore up his European support by warning that Russia could deploy as many as 150,000 troops next year to attack Europe. His key objective is to galvanise Europe so that it places tens of thousands of troops inside Ukraine as part of an enforceable ceasefire deal. He knows the deal will require him to cede land to Russia temporarily and will signal a long-term US pivot away from the defence of Europe.
