MUNICH (AP) — Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio will lead the U.S. delegation to the Munich Security Conference that starts Friday in the southern German city, where world leaders and diplomats are gathering amid intense concern and uncertainty over the Trump administration’s foreign policy.
The future of Ukraine will be the top item on the agenda following a phone call between President Donald Trump and Russian leader Vladimir Putin this week, when they pledged to work together to end the three-year-old Russia-Ukraine conflict.
Vance and Rubio are expected to meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on 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.
Rubio, however, 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.”
The Russia-Ukraine war is the biggest conflict on the European continent since World War II. Vance arrived in Munich on Thursday and started his visit with a tour of the nearby Dachau concentration camp memorial.
“I really am really moved by this site,” he said. ”And I think that while it is, of course, a place of unspeakable atrocity and terror and evil, it’s very important that it’s here, and it’s very important that those of us who are lucky enough to be alive and can walk around, can know what happened here and commit ourselves to do everything to prevent it from happening again.”
Asked if the tour had inspired any reflection on either the conflict in Ukraine or the war in Gaza, Vance demurred.
Trump’s undetailed 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 32 defense ministers met for talks on the war-torn country.
Trump was noncommittal on Wednesday about whether Ukraine would have a seat at the table in U.S. negotiations with Russia. But asked by reporters Thursday, Trump said, “Of course they would. I mean, they’re part of it. We would have Ukraine, we have Russia and we’ll have other people involved, too.”
He also noted that representatives from Russia would be at the Munich Security Conference.
Both Trump and U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth dashed Ukraine’s hopes this week of becoming part of NATO, which the alliance said less than a year ago was “irreversible,” or 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.”
Asked what he thought Russia should give up to reach a deal, he noted that talks have not yet begun and that “maybe Russia will give up a lot, maybe they won’t.”
At NATO headquarters, Hegseth reiterated Thursday that “simply pointing out realism like the borders won’t be rolled back to what everybody would like them to be in 2014 is not a concession to Vladimir Putin.” He said it’s a recognition of realities on the ground.
He added, though, that neither Russia nor Ukraine will “get everything that they want” and stressed that “any negotiation that’s had will be had with both.”
Rubio also told Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha in a call before leaving for Munich that the U.S. was committed to Ukrainian independence. He reiterated “the need for bold diplomacy to end the war in a negotiated manner leading to a sustainable peace,” according to a State Department readout.
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.
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.
But Trump said Thursday that he trusts that Putin wants to find an end to the war.
“I trust him on the subject," the U.S. president offered. “I think he’d like to see something happen.”
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Lee reported from Washington. AP reporters Lolita C. Baldor and Zeke Miller in Washington and John Leicester in Paris contributed.
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