“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.”