Navalny’s death fails to move the dial for Republican Senator J.D. Vance

U.S. Senator J.D. Vance has made a name for himself in the United States Congress as one of the most vociferous opponents of aid for Ukraine. Now he has brought that message to Europe.

At the Munich Security Conference this weekend, the 39-year-old first-time senator doubled-down on his view that helping Ukraine is not in America’s interests. 

Ukrainians are “admirable people fighting an admirable conflict,” Vance told POLITICO in an interview. “But there’s a real lack of strategic clarity about what we're supposed to accomplish,” he said. 

“We simply do not have manufacturing capacity to support a ground war in Eastern Europe indefinitely. And I think it's incumbent upon leaders to articulate this for their populations," Vance said. "How long is this expected to go on? How much is it expected to cost? And importantly, how are we actually supposed to produce the weapons necessary to support the Ukrainians?” he asked. 

In the hallowed halls of the Bayerischer Hof hotel in Munich where the annual gathering of defense and security officials is taking place, such talk is sacrilege. The annual gathering is a celebration of transatlantic relations and a bastion of pro-Ukraine sentiment. 

The Munich Security Conference has long attracted a large U.S. presence. From the late John McCain to Joe Biden, hundreds of U.S. politicians have made the trip across the Atlantic to talk security, defense and strategy. 

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba have led the Ukrainian delegation in Munich, pleading for more help and ammunition as the war launched by Russian President Vladimir Putin approaches its two-year anniversary. 

'The underlying dynamics'

The death of Alexei Navalny, announced just as the conference was kicking off on Friday, has cast a dark shadow over the proceedings. 

But for Vance it doesn’t change the calculus. 

“Look, he was obviously an extremely brave guy. It’s hard not to admire him, but I don’t think it really changes the underlying dynamics," said Vance, a Republican from Ohio.

"It’s obviously a tragic event. But you have to go into this clear eyed," he said. "Putin is not a great human being, but that doesn't change what the strategic imperatives of the United States or Europe are. We know Navalny died, because we know Putin is a brutal guy, but I knew Putin was  a brutal guy a year ago and I know he will be a brutal guy a year from now.”

Vance said he had no plans to meet the Ukrainian delegation in Munich. "I didn't think I would learn anything new. I've met the Ukrainian leadership before, and it just didn't work in the schedule," he said.

But he said the conversations he has had at the conference have done nothing to change his mind on the imperative for the United States to step back, not engage, with the Ukrainian effort to defeat Russia. 

Even if the U.S. House of Representatives ultimately approves a long-stalled aid package to Ukraine, he said, “it doesn’t change the fundamental facts — that  we are limited in the munitions that we can send, that Ukraine is limited in terms of its own manpower. The situation has to fundamentally change for them to make significant battlefield gains."

'We have to deal with reality'

The senator also dug in on his controversial view that Ukraine will ultimately cede territory to Russia. 

“Any peace settlement is going to require some significant territorial concessions from Ukraine, and you're gonna have a peace deal, because that's the only way out of the conflict," he said. "We have to deal with reality.”

At the Munich conference, such talk is verboten, as Ukraine tries to make the case for more artillery from its Western allies. In dozens of closed-door meetings, Ukrainian officials have made the argument that they desperately need more weapons — particularly Taurus cruise missiles and long-range ATACMS missiles — as they try to defeat Vladimir Putin’s army.

“Ukrainians have proven that we can force Russia to retreat,” Zelenskyy told delegates in a key-note speech Saturday. “We can get our land back, and Putin can lose, and this has already happened more than once on the battlefield.”

Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielus Landsbergis pushed back against Vance’s comments, arguing that Western security is at stake. “It’s not just in Ukraine’s interest to have a secure Ukraine. It’s European and it’s transatlantic," he told POLITICO.

"Stability is profitable. Everybody gains from it," Landsbergis said. "It has been proven that it works both ways, for Europe and for the United States and has been working for more than half a century.”

Vance’s trip to Munich is one of his first to Europe since his election to the U.S. Senate in 2022. A first-time election candidate who shot to fame for his 2016 memoir Hillbilly Elegy, he has become a staunch defender of former U.S. President Donald Trump, despite previously describing himself as a “never-Trumper.”