Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has called for the United States and Europe to band together to support Ukraine in its war against Russia.
Speaking on Friday at the Munich Security Conference, Zelenskyy also said the US, including former President Joe Biden’s administration, never saw Ukraine as a NATO member.
Ukraine will need “security guarantees” before any talks with Russia, he said, as US President Donald Trump presses both countries to find a quick end to the three-year war.
Shortly before sitting down with US Vice President JD Vance, Zelenskyy said he would only agree to meet in person with Russian President Vladimir Putin after a common plan is negotiated with US President Donald Trump.
The roughly 40-minute meeting between Vance and Zelenskyy produced no major announcements detailing the way out of the deadliest war in Europe since World War II.
“We want peace very much,” Zelenskyy said. “But we need real security guarantees.”
Vance, for his part, said the Trump administration is committed to finding a lasting peace between Ukraine and Russia.
Earlier this week, Trump upended years of steadfast US support for Ukraine with a phone call with Putin, after which Trump said the two leaders would likely meet soon to negotiate a peace deal.
In Munich on Friday, some world leaders – including conservative party leader Friedrich Merz, who is seen as the likely next chancellor of Germany – sided with the Trump administration.
“There was also agreement that the path to a lasting peace can only succeed in the closest coordination between America and Europe,” Merz said on the sideline of the conference.
But there were more widespread concerns among other leaders at the summit.
“There is concern that there may be a deal that Washington wants to do with Putin effectively excluding not just the Europeans but the Ukrainians too,” Al Jazeera’s diplomatic editor James Bays said from Munich.
But there was a stern warning from Yulia Navalnaya, the widow of Russian dissident Alexey Navalny, who died in a Russian penal colony: ”Even if you decided to negotiate with Putin, just remember he will lie.”
German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock also expressed concerns about the Trump administration’s proposal to reinstate Russia in the Group of Seven (G7) leading economies.
“As G7 partners, we have repeatedly made it clear over the last three years following this brutal Russian full-scale invasion: There can be no normal cooperation with Russia,” Baerbock said.
Just hours before Vance and Zelenskyy met, a Russian drone armed with a warhead struck the protective shell of the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant in the Kyiv region, site of the world’s worst nuclear accident in 1986.
Zelenskyy and the UN atomic agency confirmed that radiation levels remained unchanged.
Zelenskyy later told reporters in Munich that the attack was a “very clear greeting from Putin and the Russian Federation to the security conference”.
