By Andrew Gray, Andreas Rinke and John Irish
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - In February, Europe's political and foreign policy elite heard directly from Senator J.D. Vance on his opposition to military aid for Ukraine and his blunt warning that Europe will have to rely less on the United States to defend the continent.
If those comments at the annual Munich Security Conference were a first wake-up call, alarm bells are now ringing loudly across the continent after Republican Donald Trump picked Vance as his vice presidential candidate for November's U.S. election.
"His selection as the running mate is worrying for Europe," said Ricarda Lang, co-leader of the German Green party that is part of Chancellor Olaf Scholz's government, who took part in a panel discussion with Vance in Munich.
The pick stoked fears in Europe that if Trump returns to the White House, he will drop, or curb, U.S. support for Kyiv and push Ukraine into peace negotiations to end the war that would give Moscow a substantial slice of Ukraine and embolden Russian President Vladimir Putin to pursue further military adventures.
That view was bolstered by a letter to EU leaders from Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who visited Trump last week. Orban, a Trump ally, said the ex-president will be "ready to act as a peace broker immediately" if he wins in November.
Lang said on X that Vance had made very clear in Munich how quickly he and Trump would "deliver Ukraine to Putin".
U.S. STRATEGIC PRIORITIES
At the Munich conference, Vance said Putin did not pose an existential threat to Europe, and Americans and Europeans could not provide enough munitions to defeat Russia in Ukraine.
He suggested the United States' strategic priorities lay more in Asia and the Middle East.
"There are a lot of bad guys all over the world. And I'm much more interested in some of the problems in East Asia right now than I am in Europe," he told the conference.
Speaking on a podcast with Trump ally Steve Bannon in 2022, Vance said: "I don't really care what happens in Ukraine one way or the other."
In Munich, he advocated for a "negotiated peace" and said he thought Russia had an incentive to come to the table.
That stance is in stark contrast with the view of most European leaders, who argue the West should continue to support Ukraine massively with military aid and say they see no sign of Putin being willing to engage in serious negotiations.
Vance also voted against a U.S. funding bill for Ukraine that eventually passed in April. In a New York Times op-ed justifying his vote, he argued Kyiv and Washington must abandon Ukraine's goal of returning to its 1991 borders with Russia.
Nils Schmid, the foreign policy spokesperson of Scholz's Social Democrat party - said he had observed Vance in Munich and concluded the senator saw himself as Trump's mouthpiece.
"He takes an even more radical stance on Ukraine than Trump and wants to end military support. In terms of foreign policy, he is more isolationist than Trump," Schmid told Reuters.
CAUTION COUNSELLED
But some cautioned against jumping to conclusions about Vance, who was born into an impoverished home in southern Ohio.
"J.D. Vance is a devout Christian and the circumstances of his childhood give me great hope that he, like Speaker Mike Johnson, will conclude that U.S. support for Ukraine is the only option," said Melinda Haring, a senior adviser for Razom for Ukraine, a U.S.-based charitable organisation that advocates for Ukraine.
"While Vance has come out strongly against Ukraine, he hasn’t been in a top job and as vice president I expect to see his views evolve."
Some diplomats also cautioned that the U.S. election was far from over.
"We need to stop creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. Trump hasn’t won and Biden hasn’t lost," said a French diplomat.
In Ukraine, politicians were wary of criticising Vance openly, as they may have to deal with him as U.S. vice president. But some acknowledged harbouring concerns.
Oleksiy Honcharenko, a lawmaker from the opposition European Solidarity party, said he had met Vance at the Munich conference and found him to be "a very intelligent and cool-headed man".
"Is there any concern about Vance's statements? Of course. The U.S. is our biggest and most important ally," he told Reuters.
"We must remain allies and show the U.S. that Ukraine not only needs help, but can help itself."
Maryan Zablotskyy, a lawmaker for President Volodymyr Zelenskiy's Servant of the People party, argued Russia was harming U.S. interests on many fronts. He said any U.S. politician pursuing an America First agenda "will never be positive towards Russia".
(Additional reporting by Pavel Polityuk, Max Hunder and Tom Balmforth; Editing by Sharon Singleton)
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