The Munich Security Conference starts days after US 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.
As top Trump officials held a series of meetings in Europe on Thursday, Zelensky 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.
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.
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.
“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.”
EU foreign affairs chief Kaja Kallas said Thursday that “any deal behind our backs will not work” and that “appeasement also always fails”.
Zelensky, despite facing the prospect of having Ukraine’s key demands ignored after years of 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.
Zelensky was expected to redouble his efforts for more help from Europe to reach a “just peace”.
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”.
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largest military conflict since World War II, and the dramatic events of this week sparked warnings with ominous historical references.
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.
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.
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