Summary of the day
Here’s a recap of the latest developments:
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy said his country wants “security guarantees” and a joint US-Ukrainian peace plan before he enters into any talks with Vladimir Putin to end the war in his country. Zelenskyy held talks with US vice-president JD Vance on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference, after which both men agreed that further talks were required to see if they could reach a common understanding.
Vance launched a brutal ideological assault on Europe, accusing its leaders of suppressing free speech, failing to halt illegal migration and running in fear from voters’ true beliefs. In a chastising speech in Munich, the US vice president lectured European leaders on what he claimed was the continent’s failure to listen to the populist concerns of voters.
The EU’s foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said Vance’s speech felt like the US was “trying to pick a fight” with Europe. German defence minister Boris Pistorius said Vance’s intervention was “not acceptable”. Norwegian prime minister Jonas Gahr Støre criticised Vance for “not addressing some of the key security issues that we face today,” which he called a “missed opportunity.”
Britain’s foreign secretary David Lammy said he and Vance agreed that Zelenskyy must be part of any peace talks to end the war with Russia. Lammy said he was “very encouraged” in his conversations with Vance about Ukraine.
The Kremlin is assembling a high-level negotiating team to engage in direct talks with the US to end the war in Ukraine, according to a report. Members of the Russian negotiation team will reportedly include top-level political, intelligence and economic figures, including Kirill Dmitriev, a close adviser to Putin and outspoken supporter of Trump, suggesting that a key focus of Russia’s negotiating strategy in likely to be on sanctions reduction.
Yulia Navalnaya, the widow of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, warned that there was “no point trying to negotiate” with Putin, amid talks on ending the Ukraine war. “There are only two possible outcomes for any deal with Putin. If he remains in power, he will find a way to break the agreement. If he loses power, the agreement will become meaningless,” she said.
A Russian drone carrying a high-explosive warhead struck the protective containment shell of the Chornobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine overnight, Zelenskyy said. The attack came hours before the start of the Munich Security Conference.
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Updated
US vice president JD Vance met the leader of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, Alice Weidel, according to German media reports.
The meeting was held outside the Munich Security Conference venue because the AfD was not invited to the conference, public broadcaster ZDF reports.
As we reported earlier, Vance appeared to back the AfD when he called for an end of political “firewalls,” a pointed reference to a consensus among German parties not to work with the AfD.
A German government spokesperson said Vance should not interfere in the upcoming election. “I don’t think it is right for foreigners, including those from friendly foreign countries, to interfere so intensively in an election campaign in the middle of an election period,” the spokesperson said.
