President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. File
| Photo Credit: AP
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is set to meet U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance in Germany on Friday (January 14, 2025) with a warning against trusting Russia’s Vladimir Putin, as concerns mount in Kyiv and among its European allies that the Ukraine war will be settled over their heads.
The Munich Security Conference starts days after U.S. President Donald Trump and Putin held watershed talks that have shaken Ukraine and America’s NATO allies almost three years after Russia launched its full-scale invasion.
Mr. Trump said he had agreed with Mr. Putin to soon start Ukraine peace talks and exchange friendly visits — a sea change after years in which the Russian President was internationally isolated.
As top Trump officials held a series of meetings in Europe on Thursday, Mr. Zelenskyy warned world leaders “against trusting Putin’s claims of readiness to end the war” and said he wanted the United States to agree a “plan to stop Putin” before any negotiations.
Kyiv’s European backers fear Mr. Trump could force Ukraine into a bad peace deal that will leave them facing an emboldened Putin — while paying the lion’s share of costs for post-war security.
Among the European leaders, diplomats and generals in Munich, many hold grave concerns over the deepening chasm between the transatlantic allies and even for the post-World War II international order itself.
The new U.S. administration signalled Ukraine would have to give up territory to Russia and that NATO membership for Kyiv was “impractical”.
European allies were stunned to be bluntly informed that the future task of helping secure Ukraine would fall to them alone, in line with Trump’s “America First” stance and his heightened focus on China as the main strategic adversary.
Timothy Garton Ash, a professor of European studies at Oxford, wrote that America’s “message to Europe was pretty stark on Ukraine — it’s your problem. We will help cut a deal with Russia — but policing that is up to you.
“That is surely a green light for Putin to test that defence in Ukraine, meaning that Ukraine and Europe will hardly be secure as a result of a peace agreed by Trump.”
Meeting NATO partners, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth denied Trump’s 90-minute phone call with Putin on Wednesday meant a betrayal of Kyiv’s war effort.
EU foreign affairs chief Kaja Kallas said Thursday that “any deal behind our backs will not work” and that “appeasement also always fails”.
Dividing the world
Mr. Zelenskyy, despite facing the prospect of having Ukraine’s key demands ignored after years of a gruelling war, has pushed back with moderate language, apparently eager to keep a seat at the table when the big powers strike a deal over his country’s future.
He said it was “not very pleasant” that Trump had called Putin first before speaking to him, while again insisting he wanted to hammer out a “plan to stop Putin” with the United States before any talks happen.
Mr. Zelenskyy was due to meet Vance — who was to attend the Munich conference alongside Secretary of State Marco Rubio and other top US officials — and also to redouble his efforts for more help from Europe to reach a “just peace”.
Mr. Trump said Thursday that “high-level people” from Moscow, Kyiv and Washington would meet in Munich on Friday — but the Ukrainian Presidency said it did not expect to take part in talks with Russian officials and that “for the moment there is nothing on the table”.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz rejected any “dictated peace” and his defence minister, Boris Pistorius, called it “regrettable” that Washington was already making “concessions” to the Kremlin.
The Ukraine war has been Europe’s largest military conflict since World War II, and the dramatic events of this week sparked warnings with ominous historical references.
Kallas’ use of the term “appeasement” had a special resonance as conference host city Munich is where in 1938 Britain, France and Italy agreed that Czechoslovakia must surrender border regions to Nazi Germany.
Mr. Trump in social media posts has hailed the “great history of our nations”, the United States and Russia, recalling that both fought together in World War II.
Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiga said that “the Russians are trying to prolong the post-Yalta mentality, with a few people sitting around the table and dividing the world,” referring to the conference in Crimea of the British, Soviet and US leaders at the end of World War II.
Security was tight at the annual meeting in the Bavarian state capital, with police on heightened alert a day after a car-ramming attack injured 30 people, with an Afghan asylum seeker arrested at the scene.
Published – February 14, 2025 08:58 am IST
