US Vice President JD Vance has given European leaders a lashing in his first major address and claimed that their biggest threat isn’t Russia or China, but “from within”.

In a stern speech variously described as “weird” and “hard-hitting”, Vance also told his stone-faced audience that there was a “new sheriff in town under Donald Trump’s leadership”.

The audience of European leaders, gathered at the Munich Security Conference in Germany, had been expecting Vance to talk about the US’s plans to end the war in Ukraine.

But US President Donald Trump’s right-hand man did not canvas that subject.

Instead, Vance claimed that some of the biggest dangers facing the continent were European attacks on free speech and the problem of illegal immigration.

“The threat that I worry most about vis-a-vis Europe is not Russia, not China, it’s not any other external actor,” he said.

“What I worry about is the threat from within, the retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values.”

Vance claimed that European politicians were suppressing free speech and singled out examples such as raids in Germany to shut down anti-feminist content online.

Just days out from Germany’s elections, Vance appeared to signal support for the far-right party, Alternative for Germany (AfD), that mainstream parties have refused to engage with because of its Nazi origins.

He reportedly met afterwards with AfD’s candidate for chancellor, Alice Weidel, who praised Vance’s speech as “excellent”.

Of billionaire Elon Musk’s recent meddling in German politics and support for AfD Vance said: “If American democracy can survive 10 years of Greta Thunberg scolding, you guys can survive a few months of Elon Musk.”

Vance also said there was “nothing more urgent than mass migration” and blamed governments for causing “skyrocketing”  levels of migration.

He linked the issue to an Afghan asylum seeker’s car ramming into a crowd in Munich on Friday and injuring 30 people.

Ukrainian MP Oleksiy Honcharenko, who attended the conference, later said Vance’s speech was “the total humiliation of all European leaders”.

“People in the room are shocked,” he posted on X.

“For most of Vance’s speech, the European leaders and bureaucrats looked at each other, and there was almost no applause.”

German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius reacted to Vance’s address, saying he had called into question democracy in all of Europe.

“If I have understood him correctly, he is comparing conditions in parts of Europe with those in authoritarian regimes.

“That is not acceptable.”

Vance met afterwards with Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky on the sidelines of the conference.

Zelensky said it was a “good conversation” and more talks were needed to achieve an end to the war.

Ending Ukraine war

Vance had earlier been quoted in a Wall Street Journal article saying the US could hit Moscow with sanctions and potential military action if Russia did not agree to a peace deal with Ukraine.

“There are economic tools of leverage, there are of course military tools of leverage” the US could use, Vance said in an interview with the newspaper.

“There are any number of formulations, of configurations, but we do care about Ukraine having sovereign independence,” he said.

Trump on Wednesday discussed the war with Russian President Vladimir Putin and separately with Zelensky, and told US officials to begin talks on ending the nearly three-year-long conflict.

The phone calls came shortly after US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth told Ukraine’s military allies in Brussels that a return to Ukraine’s pre-2014 borders — before Russia annexed Crimea — was unrealistic and that the US does not see NATO membership for Kyiv as part of a solution.

Ukrainians on Thursday worried that Trump was preparing to sell out their country following his phone call Putin.

Earlier in the day, Trump said that Ukraine would be involved in peace talks with Russia.

Kyiv said it would be premature to speak with Moscow at a security conference on Friday.

“I think there is a deal that is going to come out of this that’s going to shock a lot of people,” the newspaper quoted Vance as saying.

“The president is not going to go in this with blinders on,” Vance said. “He’s going to say, ‘Everything is on the table, let’s make a deal.'”

Vance also agreed that Trump might change his mind depending on how the negotiations unfold.

“President Trump could say, ‘Look, we don’t want this thing, we might not like this thing, but we’re willing to put it back on the table if the Russians aren’t being good negotiating partners’, or there are things that are very important to Ukrainians that we might want to take off the table,” he said.

Speaking to reporters at the White House, Trump said Ukraine would have a seat at the table during any peace negotiations with Russia.

“They’re part of it. We would have Ukraine, and we have Russia, and we’ll have other people involved, a lot of people,” Trump said.

Asked whether he trusts Putin, he said: “I believe that he would like to see something happen. I trust him on this subject.”

Trump’s unilateral overture to Putin on Wednesday, accompanied by apparent concessions on Ukraine’s principal demands, raised alarm for both Kyiv and the European allies in NATO who said they feared the White House might make a deal without them.

“We, as a sovereign country, simply will not be able to accept any agreements without us,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said.

He said Putin aimed to make his negotiations bilateral with the United States, and it was important that this not be allowed.

The Kremlin said plans were under way for Putin and Trump to meet, possibly in Saudi Arabia. Ukraine would “of course” participate in peace talks in some way, but there would also be a bilateral negotiation track between the United States and Russia, said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov.

European officials took an exceptionally firm line in public towards Trump’s peace overture, saying any agreement would be impossible to implement unless they and the Ukrainians were included in negotiating it.

“Any quick fix is a dirty deal,” European foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said.

She also denounced the apparent concessions offered in advance.

“Why are we giving them (Russia) everything that they want even before the negotiations have been started?” said Kallas.

A European diplomatic source said ministers had agreed to engage in a “frank and demanding dialogue” with US officials – some of the strongest language in the diplomatic lexicon – at the annual Munich Security Conference beginning on Friday.

On Wednesday, Trump made the first publicly acknowledged White House call with Putin since Russia’s February 2022 full-scale invasion, and then followed it up with a call to Zelenskiy. Trump said he believed both men wanted peace.

But the Trump administration also said openly for the first time that it was unrealistic for Ukraine to expect to return to its 2014 borders or join the NATO alliance as part of any agreement, and that no US troops would join any security force in Ukraine that might be set up to guarantee a ceasefire.

US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, who unveiled the new policy in remarks at NATO headquarters, said the world was fortunate to have Trump, the “best negotiator on the planet, bringing two sides together to find a negotiated peace”.

Kremlin spokesman Peskov said Moscow was “impressed” by Trump’s willingness to seek a settlement.

-with AAP