Hard-right US politician J.D. Vance at the Munich Security Conference, February 14, 2025 (Sky)

How Trump’s Call with Putin Betrayed Ukraine and Europe

Map: Institute for the Study of War

UPDATE 1719 GMT:

The Trump Administration has suggested to Ukraine that it be granted 50% ownership of the country’s rare earth minerals, according to “four US officials”.

The Administration has indicated it is willing to deploy American troops to guard the site if there is a deal to end Moscow’s invasion.

Two officials said the arrangement would reimburse the US for billions of dollars in weapons and support to Ukraine during the invasion.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent presented a draft contract to Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv on Wednesday, according to “eight US officials briefed on the meeting”.

Zelensky declined to sign the document, saying he needed to study it and consult others.

The President said at the time that he and his team “will do everything to review all details of the document” before his arrival at the Munich Security Conference on Friday.

Zelensky added in his speech at the Conference that his lawyers will give advice and recommend any changes.

On Saturday, he explained, “I did not allow the ministers to sign the agreement because, in my opinion, it’s not ready to protect us, our interests.”

He noted, “There are no security guarantees.”

UPDATE 1659 GMT:

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky says almost 250,000 Russian troops have been killed and more than 610,000 wounded in Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

Zelensky told the Munich Security Conference that almost 20,000 Russian soldiers were slain in battles to regain the Kursk region in western Russia, part of which has been held by Ukraine since last August.

We completely destroyed the North Korean units that Putin had to bring in because his own forces weren’t enough to hold back our counter-offensive

For over six months now, Ukrainians have been holding a foothold inside Russian territory, even though it was Russia that wanted to create a “buffer zone” inside our land.

UPDATE 1624 GMT:

Concerned about the Trump Administration’s withdrawal from security of the continent, European countries are developing a plan to send peacekeeping troops to Ukraine.

France and the UK are leading the initiative. Estonia’s Defense Minister Hanno Pevkur said the plan is “in a very early stage”.

In December, a group of ministers met with Zelensky at NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte’s residence in Brussels. The participants were from the European Union, the UK, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Poland.

Talks built on the idea of French President Emmanuel Macron, from early 2024, to deploy troops inside Ukraine.

Pevkur said it is “critical” for European allies to understand the contact line in Ukraine before implementing the plan.

If Russia and Ukraine reduce forces along the frontline to a “couple of thousand” on both sides, then “it’s not a problem for Europe to also be there,” Pevkur said. It will be much harder if there is still a “boiling conflict”.

UPDATE 1534 GMT:

Donald Trump’s envoy for Ukraine, Keith Kellogg, says Europe will be excluded from negotiations over Russia’s invasion.

Asked at the Munich Security Conference if Europe would be present at the talks, Kellogg said he was from “the school of realism, and that is not going to happen”.

It may be like chalk on the blackboard, it may grate a little bit, but I am telling you something that is really quite honest.

And to my European friends, I would say: get into the debate, not by complaining that you might, yes or no, be at the table, but by coming up with concrete proposals, ideas, ramp up [defense] spending.

Kellogg asserted that previous agreements between Ukraine and Russia failed because too many countries were involved in negotiations: “We are not going to get down that path.”

Poland’s Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski said French President Emmanuel Macron has invited European leaders to Paris on Sunday to discuss the situation.

Kellogg said the critical issues are to ensure no resumption of the invasion and to determine how Ukraine retains its sovereignty. He said this will require a credible security guarantee, but said Trump was not in a position to define this: “[He] would need a full range of options….All options are on the table.”

UPDATE 1208 GMT:

France’s Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot has responded to J.D. Vance’s attack, in the guise of “free speech”, on European protections for privacy and against propaganda, disinformation, and hate speech.

“Freedom of expression is guaranteed in Europe,” Barrot said. “Nobody is obliged to adopt our model, but nobody can impose theirs on us.”

UPDATE 1157 GMT:

China has responded to Donald Trump by calling for Europe’s involvement in negotiations to end Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Foreign Minister Wang Yi told the Munich Security Conference:

As the war is taking place on European soil, it is all the more necessary for Europe to play its part for peace, to jointly address the root causes of the crisis, to find a balanced, effective and sustainable security framework, and to achieve long-term peace and stability in Europe.

Wang also told European Union foreign policy head Kaja Kallas that China is ready to step up strategic communication with the bloc, enhance mutual understanding, and jointly bring more stability to the world.

He emphasized China’s position supporting Europe’s role in the peace talks.

UPDATE 1130 GMT:

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has also responded to the threat of Donald Trump making a deal with Vladimir Putin, and to Trump officials like J.D. Vance and Pete Hegseth distancing the Administration from European security.

Europe urgently needs its own plan of action concerning Ukraine and our security, or else other global players will decide about our future. Not necessarily in line with our own interest.

This plan must be prepared now. There’s no time to lose.

UPDATE 1117 GMT:

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky has told the Munich Security Conference that the “time has come for a European army to be created”, with Europe manufacturing its own weapons.

“Europe must decide its own future,” he emphasized.

Acknowledging “our army alone is not enough, we need your support,” Zelensky said, “We will never accept deals reached behind our backs, without our involvement….We cannot agree to a ceasefire without real security guarantees.”

He added that he would not take NATO membership for Ukraine off the table: “We need coordinated diplomacy….End of this war should be our first shared success.”

Zelensky repeated, “No decisions about Ukraine without Ukraine, no decisions about Europe without Europe. Europe must have a seat at the table.”

The President told other leaders at the conference that it would be “dangerous” for US Donald Trump to meet Putin before conferring with Zelensky.

UPDATE 1109 GMT:

Chancellor Olaf Scholz says Germany will not accept people who “intervene in our democracy”, after J.D. Vance verbally attacked European nations and met with Alice Weidel, the leader of the far-right German party AfD.

Germany is a very strong democracy, and as a strong democracy, we are absolutely clear that the extreme right should be out of political control and out of political decision making processes, and that there will be no cooperation with them.

We really reject any idea of cooperation between parties, other parties, and this extreme right party.

Scholz emphasized, “There will only be peace if Ukraine’s sovereignty is secured. A dictated peace will therefore never find our support.”

He added in his address to the Munich Security Conference:

We will also not accept any solution that leads to a decoupling of European and American security. Only one person would benefit from this: President Putin.

We Europeans will represent these interests confidently and unitedly in the upcoming negotiations.

The Chancellor cited the responsibility of Europe, the US, and the international community to build up Ukraine’s armed forces: “All the sort of security guarantees we give should be designed from this basis.”

UPDATE 0820 GMT:

As Russia — seeking leverage with Donald Trump over its invasion of Ukraine — freed American schoolteacher Marc Fogel earlier this week, it was detaining another US citizen.

The 28-year-old American was sent to a detention center on Monday, a day before Fogel returned to the US. The new detainee was seized at Moscow’s Vnukovo Airport on February 7, and charged with carrying cannabis-laced gummies in his luggage.

The American explained said the gummies were prescribed by a doctor in the US. He faces 5 to 10 years in prison and a fine of 1 million rubles ($11,000).

Fogel, a teacher at an Anglo-American school in Moscow, was detained in August 2021. He was nominally swapped for Alexander Vinnik, co-founder of the BTC-e crypto exchange, whom Washington accused of laundering $4 billion. However, the deal was quickly followed by Donald Trump’s declaration of direct discussions with Vladimir Putin, excluding Ukraine and Europe, over Russia’s three-year invasion.

UPDATE 0811 GMT:

Ukraine President Voldymyr Zelensky acknowledges, in an interview to be broadcast on US television on Sunday:

It will probably be very, very, very difficult. And of course, in all difficult situations, you have a chance. But we will have very few chances, very few chances to survive without the support of the United States.

I think it is very important, critically important.

UPDATE 0801 GMT:

Ukraine has secured the return of eight children forcibly taken to Russian-occupied territory, says Dmytro Lubinets, the Ukrainian Parliament’s Commissioner for Human Rights.

“Among the returned children are siblings,” Lubinets wrote. “All the children were separated from their families due to the war and occupation, and some lost their parents. In general, we managed to return children from the Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson regions.”

During Moscow’s full-scale invasion, at least 20,000 Ukrainian children have been abducted and sent to Russia or Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine.

Lubinets estimates that Russia has unlawfully deported up to 150,000 Ukrainian children, while the Children’s Ombudswoman, Daria Herasymchuk, puts the figure at 200,000 to 300,000.

In March 2023, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Vladimir Putin and Russia’s “Children’s Rights” Commission Maria Lvova-Belova over the deportations.

UPDATE 0729 GMT:

Facing Donald Trump’s direct talks with Vladimir Putin, French President Emmanuel Macron has assured Ukraine counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky that it is “Ukrainians alone who can drive the discussions for a solid and lasting peace”.

“We will help them in this endeavor,” Macron posted.

Earlier on Friday, Macron warned against a deal with Russia that amounted to “capitulation”.

Zelensky referred to the necessity of “security guarantees” as he summarized, “It is crucial that we share the same vision of what a just end to this war should look like. I appreciate France’s efforts for our collective security and its commitment to the principle: ‘Nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine’.”

Zelensky also spoke of his meeting with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, “We discussed coordination with NATO member states to develop a joint position on ending the war and pressuring Russia toward a just and lasting peace. One of the key conditions for this should be reliable security guarantees for Ukraine.”

ORIGINAL ENTRY: European leaders have repelled US Vice President J.D. Vance’s verbal attack at the Munich Security Conference on Friday.

In his address to the conference, Vance began by declaring that with Donald Trump’s return to the White House, “There is a new sheriff in town.” He assailed Europe’s governments while implicitly supporting hard-right groups threatening their societies.

If you’re running in fear of your own voters, there is nothing America can do for you, nor, for that matter, is there anything that you can do for the American people who elected me and elected President Trump.

In the guise of protecting “free speech”, he criticized European Union protocols trying to limit disinformation and protect privacy, and he derided “firewalls” keeping the far right out of mainstream politics as “old entrenched interests hiding behind ugly Soviet-era words like misinformation and disinformation”.

We do not have to agree with everything or anything people say, but when political leaders represent an important constituency, it is incumbent on us to listen.

Playing to the hard right’s agenda, he whipped up fear of migration, hailed the UK’s Brexit departure from the EU, and derided efforts against climate change, including the work of environmental activist Greta Thunberg.

Waving aside Russia’s propaganda and disinformation campaigns, including interference in elections, he said, “If your democracy can be destroyed by a few thousand dollars of digital media from a foreign country it was not very strong to begin with.”

In a pointed demonstration of his support of the hard right, Vance refused to see German Chancellor Olaf Scholz. Instead, less than two weeks before Germany’s national election, he conferred for 30 minutes with the leader of the far-right AfD, Alice Weidel.

“Democracy Was Called Into Question”

EU foreign policy head Kaja Kallas responded, “Listening to that speech, they try to pick a fight with us and we don’t want to a pick a fight with our friends.” She said allies should be focusing on bigger threats like Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Sweden’s Foreign Minister Maria Malmer Stenergard replied to Vance’s criticism of her country: “Sweden has a very far-reaching freedom of expression. As a Swedish politician, I do not review [decisions by] independent courts, and I think politicians in other countries should also refrain from doing so.”

The sharpest rebuttal came from German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius:

Democracy was called into question by the US Vice President for the whole of Europe earlier.

He speaks of the annihilation of democracy. And if I have understood him correctly, he is comparing conditions in parts of Europe with those in authoritarian regions….That is not acceptable.

Foreshadowing Vance’s speech, German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier said Trump and his tech-sector allies like Elon Musk — who has promoted Weidel, including in an online interview, and persistently attacked Scholz — of being willing to destroy democracy.

It is clear that the new American administration holds a worldview that is very different from our own. One that shows no regard for established rules, for partnerships or for the trust that has been built over time.

But I am convinced that it is not in the interest of the international community for this worldview to become the dominant paradigm.

Vance Withdraws Challenge to Putin Over Ukraine

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky, facing Trump’s threat of direct talks with Vladimir Putin, was more conciliatory.

He told reporters of a “good conversation” with Vance:

We need to speak more, to work more and to prepare the plan [for] how to stop Putin and finish the work….We want peace very much, but we need real security guarantees.

“Our first meeting, not last, I’m sure,” he said.

Two Ukrainian officials said “some details” of a proposed agreement, in which the Trump Administration would assure aid in return for rare earth minerals from Ukraine, needed to be established.

Zelensky wrote, “Our teams will continue to work on the document.”

But Vance retreated from a statement that the Trump Administration might use sanctions to press Russia into ending its three-year invasion.

On Thursday, Vance told the Wall Street Journal that the US had “economic” and “military tools of leverage” it could use to push Moscow into negotiations. Asked if the possibility of US troops in Ukraine to protect the country’s security was “officially off the table,” Vance replied that, in negotiations with President Donald Trump, “everything is on the table”.

But on Friday, Vance withdrew that possibility:

President Trump is the ultimate deal maker and will bring peace to the region by ending the war in Ukraine. As we’ve always said, American troops should never be put into harm’s way where it doesn’t advance American interests and security. This war is between Russia and Ukraine.

He snapped at the outlet, “The fact that the WSJ twisted my words in the way they did for this story is absurd, but not surprising considering they have spent years pushing for more American sons and daughters in uniform to be unnecessarily deployed overseas.”