Free speech in Europe is at risk. That was the stark warning delivered by U.S. Vice President JD Vance on Friday during his speech at the Munich Security Conference, where he called on European nations to increase military spending, crack down on “unvetted” immigration, and safeguard freedom of expression.
In a later face-to-face meeting with Volodymyr Zelensky, Vance also sought to reassure the Ukrainian President that the White House remains committed to pursuing a “lasting peace” for the war-torn country.
In a 20-minute address, Donald Trump’s right-hand man came across as unflinching—at times even combative—as he criticized Brussels and the conference’s German hosts alike.
“For years, we’ve been told that everything we support and finance is done in the name of democratic values,” Vance told the assembled policymakers and security experts. “When we see European courts canceling elections and senior officials threatening to cancel others, we ought to ask whether we’re holding ourselves to an appropriately high standard,” Vance said.
He went on to argue that European voters had never endorsed policies that opened “the floodgates to millions of unvetted immigrants”. His remarks came just a day after an Afghan asylum seeker allegedly drove his car into a crowd in downtown Munich, injuring at least 36 people, including two critically. The suspect, identified as 24-year-old Farhad N., is believed to have acted with an Islamist motive and has been arrested on suspicion of attempted mass murder.
“How many times must we suffer these appalling setbacks before we change course and take our shared civilization in a new direction?”, Vance asked. He expressed Washington’s growing concern over what he described as Europe’s retreat from core values shared with the United States. Chief among them, he said, was freedom of speech, which he claimed was under siege by European governments even as it was being revived across the Atlantic after four years of Democratic rule.
Among the examples of alleged censorship listed by Vance was the “firewall” erected by Germany’s traditional political parties to counter the rise of the far-right movement Alternative for Germany (AfD). The party, which polls as the second-largest political force in the country, has garnered strong support from high-profile figures in the Trump administration, including Elon Musk. On Friday evening, Vance also met with AfD leader Alice Weidel, as briefly confirmed by a party spokesperson.
Shifting from domestic issues to military affairs, Vance echoed remarks made by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth earlier in the week, urging European allies to assume greater responsibility for their defense so that the U.S. can pivot toward countering China.
“NATO is a very important military alliance, of course, that we’re the most significant part of,” Vance told the Alliance’s Secretary-General Mark Rutte earlier Friday. “But we want to make sure that NATO is actually built for the future, and we think a big part of that is ensuring that NATO does a little bit more burden-sharing in Europe, so the United States can focus on some of our challenges in East Asia.”
The Trump administration has repeatedly pushed for NATO members to raise defense spending to 5% of their GDP, dismissing the current 2% benchmark as outdated and insufficient. Eight of NATO’s 32 member states still fall significantly short of the existing target, including Croatia (1.81%), Portugal (1.55%), Italy (1.49%), Canada (1.37%), Belgium (1.30%), Luxembourg (1.29%), Slovenia (1.29%), and Spain (1.28%).
Poland, by contrast, leads the pack, allocating 4.1% of its GDP to defense—surpassing the United States’ 3.4% figure—and is aiming to hit 4.7% by the end of 2025.
The war in Ukraine loomed large over the conference, particularly after Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin held their first official phone call on Wednesday, during which they reportedly agreed to begin peace talks “immediately.” Kyiv and several European capitals have interpreted the move as a step toward compelling Ukraine to surrender territory.
Trump has previously suggested that ending the war might involve Ukraine ceding certain regions to Moscow—arguably, the four southern and eastern provinces Russia claims as its own, along with Crimea, which it annexed in 2014. The U.S. president has also floated the idea of conditioning future aid to Ukraine on a deal granting American companies access to the country’s lucrative rare-earth reserves, estimated to be worth around half a trillion dollars.
But in an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Vance warned that Washington could impose fresh sanctions on Russia or even deploy troops to Ukraine if Moscow proves unwilling to negotiate. The statement took many observers by surprise, given Trump’s consistent “America First” rhetoric and calls for disengaging from foreign conflicts. The Vice President’s spokesperson, William Martin, later clarified on X that Vance “didn’t make any threats. He simply stated the fact that no one is going to take options away from President Trump as these negotiations begin.”
Vance discussed the matter with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky himself at the end of a much anticipated face-to-face. “Fundamentally, the goal is as President Trump outlined it”, he told reporters. “We want the war to come to a close. We want the killing to stop, but we want to achieve a durable, lasting peace, not the kind of peace that’s going to have eastern Europe in conflict just a couple years down the road,” he added.
The Vice President, however, avoided providing further details. “I want to preserve the optionality here for the negotiators and our respective teams to bring this thing to a responsible close,” he claimed.
“We are very thankful for American support,” Zelensky said. “We had good conversations today, our first meeting, not last, I’m sure,” he added.
Earlier on Friday, German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier cautioned against any U.S.-Russia deal that sidelines Kyiv and other European allies. “We all want this war to end, but how it ends will determine the future security architecture for both Europe and America,” Steinmeier said, adding that Europe must move toward greater self-reliance: “The continent’s security can no longer rest solely on American shoulders.”
That sentiment appears to be gaining traction across the continent, even as European leaders worry about waning U.S. support. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer reiterated his backing for Ukraine’s NATO membership bid, while French Deputy Foreign Minister Benjamin Haddad framed the current moment as a “crossroads for Europe”:
“We need to break free from our dependence on the United States for security. If Russia prevails in Ukraine, the ripple effects will reach Asia too.”
Diplomatic talks in Munich have not interrupted the fighting on the ground. Just hours before the conference began, Ukrainian officials reported a drone strike on the protective sarcophagus at the Chernobyl nuclear site. While radiation levels reportedly remained stable, Ukrainian President Zelensky described the attack as “a clear message from Putin to the security conference.” The Kremlin has denied any involvement, and Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova criticized Russia’s exclusion from the summit, calling it “a strange, politically motivated decision.”
