Trump's VP pick signals shift away from Ukraine, Europe

Donald Trump picked J.D. Vance -- a staunch opponent of aid for Kyiv who wants Washington to refocus on Asia -- as his running mate, signaling a potential shift away from Europe if the Republican candidate wins in November.

Vance -- a 39-year-old retired US Marine and best-selling author -- is ideologically close to the former president, and his views on foreign policy could help shape Trump's second term in office if he defeats Democrat Joe Biden.

"I gotta be honest with you, I don't really care what happens to Ukraine one way or another as a country," the senator from Ohio said on a podcast in April.

Vance was one of the fiercest opponents of the approval of $61 billion in new military aid for Ukraine, which was stalled by Republican lawmakers for months earlier this year -- a time in which Russia made battlefield gains.

The United States has provided tens of billions of dollars in military assistance for Kyiv since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

But Vance and other Trump allies in Congress argue that Washington cannot continue to fund the war indefinitely, and a Trump victory in November would throw future American assistance for Ukraine into doubt.

Trump has said he would quickly end the conflict, raising the specter that Kyiv could be pushed to negotiate with Moscow from an unfavorable position.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Monday that he was not concerned about the prospect of another Trump presidency, despite indications his administration could be more sympathetic to the Kremlin.

- 'Subsidizing European security' -

"I think that if Donald Trump becomes president, we will work together. I'm not worried about this," Zelensky told a news conference.

Asked on Tuesday about the consequences of a Trump presidency for Ukraine, US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said both lawmakers and the American public back continued support for Kyiv.

"The American people strongly support continued assistance to Ukraine. They strongly support allowing Ukraine and helping Ukraine to defend itself against Russia's aggression. It's not just the American public, but it's bipartisan majorities in both houses of Congress," Miller told journalists.

For Vance, European countries have relied on the United States for security for far too long, and he advocates a shift to increasingly concentrate on East Asia.

"NATO countries can't be welfare clients of the US," Vance told Fox News in June, while he said in February that "we have been subsidizing European security to the tune of trillions of dollars."

Speaking at the Munich Security Conference earlier this year, Vance argued that "the United States has to focus more on East Asia. That is going to be the future of American foreign policy for the next 40 years, and Europe has to wake up to that fact."

"The point is not we want to abandon Europe. The point is we need to focus as a country on East Asia, and we need our European allies to step up in Europe," he said, urging the continent to "take a more aggressive role in its own security."