Vance’s attack on Europe ignores Ukraine and the defense agenda

This year’s Munich Security Conference was supposed to be mainly on two things: how to put an end to war in Ukraine without yielding to Russia and how Europe needed to increase its defense expenditure.

But the most important American, the American vice president JD Vance, used his time on the podium to talk about either.

Instead, he surprised the delegates on Friday by attacking Washington’s allies, including Great Britain, in an scorching attack that denounces erroneous information, misinformation and rights of freedom of expression.

They were about 20 minutes very strange: one was largely found with the silence of the delegates in the hall.

Even a joke, “if US democracy can survive 10 years from (climatic activist) Greta Thunberg Regcholding, you can survive a few months from Elon Musk,” they failed to laugh.

In summary, Vance’s speech has fallen very badly, unequivocally badly. It was extraordinarily poorly judged.

But who did he point to?

An American commentator told me later: “That was all for American domestic consumption.”

However, the vice president met with the task Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky, who did everything possible to sound positive.

The couple had “a good conversation,” according to Zelensky, who said he scored “our first meeting, not the last one, I’m sure.” The Ukrainian leader emphasized the need for Washington and kyiv to speak more and work together “to prepare the plan (in) how to stop Putin and finish the war.”

“We want, really, we want peace. But we need real security guarantees,” Zelensky added.

According to the president of the United States, Donald Trump, Russian President Vladimir Putin also wants peace, but that is peace in its terms. Unless they have changed in secret, they involve capitulation to the demands of Russia and the permanent transfer of territory to Moscow.

Vance’s speech occurred days after President Trump effectively took out the carpet from the Ukrainian negotiation position by granting, through his Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, which Restoring the territory of Ukraine where it was before the first Russian invasion in 2014 is simply “not realistic”.

The United States also expelled kyiv’s hopes to join NATO, a key ambition from President Zelensky, and ruled out sending US troops to help protect Ukraine borders from the next time Russia decides to invade.

Before Munich’s conference, Europe was surprised by the news that Trump had made a 90 -minute cordial phone call with Putin, abruptly ending the freezing of three years of the West when speaking with the Russian leader who has been in his place From the moment of the 2022 invasion.

Delegates in Munich are scheduled to focus on war in Ukraine on a high profile debate on Saturday.

The fear in Munich among European leaders and their delegations is that in Donald Trump’s haste to ensure a peace agreement in Ukraine, Putin will be victorious, stronger and planning to take advantage of more land plots in Europe.