Hello and welcome to NewsHour from the BBC World Service. We're coming to you live from London.

I'm James Menendez. And once again, it is the future of Ukraine that's dominating discussions

between the major Western powers following President Trump's startling announcement earlier in the

week that he'd spoken one-on-one to Vladimir Putin

to set in motion negotiations over bringing three years of war to an end.

And those debates are now being played out on a very public stage

because the annual Munich Security Conference got underway today.

President Zelensky of Ukraine echoes the words of many European leaders

saying that his country mustn't be left out of those negotiations and warned that whatever their

outcome, Vladimir Putin, would remain a serious threat to Europe and to NATO.

I think that he's preparing the war against NATO countries next year.

And I think so.

But I don't know, you know, I don't have 100.

God bless, we will stop this crazy guy.

And we will not have any war in the world in Europe.

But you will not stop him just to say, yes, he said that we will stop.

It's not enough.

And speaking in the past hour, the US Vice President J.D. Vance has been telling the conference

that there is a new sheriff in town and that Washington's primary concern in Europe isn't

foreign aggression,

but what he described as an internal threat.

While the Trump administration is very concerned with European security and believes that we can come to a reasonable settlement between Russia and Ukraine,

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