MUNICH (AP) — Vice President JD Vance hammered home the U.S. demand that the NATO alliance step up defense spending on Friday, ahead of a security meeting in Europe at a time of intense concern and uncertainty over the Trump administration’s foreign policy.
The future of Ukraine is the top item on the agenda at the Munich Security Conference following a phone call between U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian leader Vladimir Putin this week, when they pledged to work together to end the 3-year-old Russia-Ukraine conflict.
Vance is expected to meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy later Friday for talks that many — particularly in Europe — hope will shed at least some light on Trump’s ideas for a negotiated settlement to the war.
Vance started his day in Munich meeting separately with NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte and German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier. He used the engagements to reiterate the 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.
“NATO is a very important military alliance, of course, that we’re the most significant part of,” Vance told Rutte. "But 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.”
Rutte said he agreed that Europe needs to step up. “We have to grow up in that sense and spend much more,” he said.
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. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Friday denied Ukraine's claims .
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio was supposed to join Vance and Zelenskyy but was delayed when his Air Force plane had to return to Washington after developing a mechanical problem en route to Munich. The State Department spokeswoman said he would take a different aircraft, but it was unclear whether he would arrive in time for the meeting with Zelenskyy.
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.”
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 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.
“There can be no negotiation about Ukraine without Ukraine. And Ukraine’s voice must be at the heart of any talks,” U.K. Defense Secretary John Healey told reporters at NATO headquarters as the alliance’s defense ministers met for talks on the war-torn country.
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.
“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.
Starmer spoke to Zelenskyy by phone on Friday and “reiterated the U.K.’s commitment to Ukraine being on an irreversible path to NATO,” the prime minister’s office said.
Trump in recent days said he wants to reach an agreement with Ukraine to gain access to the country’s rare earth materials as a condition for continuing U.S. support for Ukraine’s defense against Russia. He confirmed earlier this week that aides were working toward striking such a deal.
Asked Friday if a deal might be completed in Munich, Vance responded, “We'll see.”
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.
“There are economic tools of leverage, there are of course military tools of leverage,” Vance added.
The U.S. reassurances may have somewhat allayed Zelenskyy’s fears, although they will not replace any lost military or economic support that the Biden administration had provided.
The Ukrainian leader conceded Thursday that it was “not very pleasant” that the American president 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.
On Friday, the Kremlin spokesman responded that “there is no news on the subject of the Ukrainian settlement, we have nothing to say" when he was asked to comment on Trump’s claim that U.S., Russian and Ukrainian officials will hold talks on the sidelines of the Munich conference.
“Following their conversation, the leaders of the U.S. and Russia have instructed their aides to establish contacts,” Peskov said. “It will take a few days, and we will inform you afterward.”
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.
“What’s at stake is not just the interests of Ukraine and the Europeans. Everyone would lose, starting with the United States. And I think the United States know that,” he said.
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Lee reported from Washington. AP reporters Lolita C. Baldor and Zeke Miller in Washington, John Leicester in Paris, and Jill Lawless in London contributed.
