President Volodymyr Zelensky said in an excerpt from an NBC interview published Friday night that Ukraine had a low chance of surviving Russia’s assault without U.S. support.
In the excerpt from “Meet the Press with Kristen Welker,” Mr. Zelensky said: “Probably it will be very, very, very difficult. And of course, in all the difficult situations, you have a chance. But we will have low chance — low chance to survive without support of the United States.”
The full interview is set to be broadcast on Sunday, according to NBC.
His comments were aired on the first day of the Munich Security Conference, where hundreds of anxious European diplomats and others gathered expecting to hear Vice President JD Vance speak about President Trump’s strategy to broker peace negotiations with Russia to end the war in Ukraine.
But Mr. Vance mentioned Ukraine only in passing and offered no road map for negotiations or even any strategic vision of what Europe should look like after the most devastating ground war being waged on the continent in 80 years. Instead, he urged European nations to stop isolating their far-right parties, saying the biggest security threat was the suppression of free speech.
Earlier in the week, Pete Hegseth, Mr. Trump’s defense secretary, jolted Kyiv and European allies of Ukraine by saying in a meeting with NATO and Ukrainian defense ministers in Brussels that the United States did not support Ukraine’s desire to join NATO as part of a peace plan. He also described a return to Ukraine’s borders before 2014 — when Russia annexed Crimea — as “unrealistic.”
Mr. Trump has repeatedly suggested trading U.S. aid for Ukraine’s critical minerals, telling Fox News earlier this month that he wanted “the equivalent of like $500 billion worth of rare earths,” a group of minerals crucial for many high-tech products, in exchange for American aid. Ukraine had “essentially agreed to do that,” he said.
In Munich, the Ukrainian president did get to make his case while sitting across a table on Friday from Mr. Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Keith Kellogg, the retired general who is Trump’s envoy for Ukraine and Russia.
Mr. Zelensky asked for “security guarantees.” Mr. Vance stressed the importance of beginning conversations about ending the war in Ukraine but declined to discuss specifics, he said, to preserve negotiators’ options.
“Fundamentally the goal is, as President Trump outlined it, we want the war to come to a close, we want the killing to stop,” Mr. Vance said. “But we want to achieve a durable, lasting peace.”
Later, Mr. Zelensky expressed thanks for American support but said there was much work to be done “to prepare the plan to stop Putin.”
In a social media post, he said, “We addressed many key issues and look forward to welcoming General Kellogg to Ukraine for further meetings and a deeper assessment of the situation on the ground.” He added, “We are ready to move as quickly as possible towards a real and guaranteed peace.”
Reporting was contributed by Jim Tankersley, David E. Sanger, Steven Erlanger and Maria Varenikova.
