Vice President JD Vance said the U.S. must understand both Russia and Ukraine’s strategic red lines to end the war, and dismissed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky‘s “absurd” suggestion that Washington is taking Moscow’s side.
Zelensky had told CBS‘ 60 Minutes program that he believes “Russian narratives are prevailing in the U.S.” and that he understood Vance to be “somehow justifying Putin’s actions” by presenting Ukraine as an aggressor, too.
Why it Matters
There are ongoing tensions between the leaderships in Washington and Kyiv as the Trump administration tries to broker an end to Russia’s war.
Some in Washington see Zelensky as an obstacle to peace and want him out, but Ukraine’s allies in Europe fear U.S. President Donald Trump will compromise too readily with Russian President Vladimir Putin for the sake of securing a quick deal.
What To Know
Vance said in an interview with British media website UnHerd published on Tuesday morning that he has criticized Russia for its full-scale invasion of Ukraine since February 2022.
“I’ve also tried to apply strategic recognition that if you want to end the conflict, you have to try to understand where both the Russians and the Ukrainians see their strategic objectives,” Vance told the publication.
“That doesn’t mean you morally support the Russian cause, or that you support the full-scale invasion, but you do have to try to understand what are their strategic red lines, in the same way that you have to try to understand what the Ukrainians are trying to get out of the conflict.”
He added: “I think it’s sort of absurd for Zelensky to tell the [American] government, which is currently keeping his entire government and war effort together, that we are somehow on the side of the Russians.”
Vance said Zelensky’s rhetoric “is certainly not productive.”
Newsweek has contacted the press office of Ukraine’s Foreign Affairs Ministry by email for comment.
Vance and Trump were involved in a stunning public clash with Zelensky in the Oval Office in February. The vice president accused Ukraine’s leader of showing disrespect to the president and of insufficient gratitude to the U.S. for its help. Trump said Zelensky was gambling with World War III.
Since then, relations have repaired somewhat, but tensions remain. Trump wants to end Russia’s war on Ukraine swiftly, saying he can no longer tolerate the scale of the loss of life and the cost to U.S. taxpayers of funding Kyiv’s defense via military aid.
Ukraine and its European allies fear Trump will compromise too much with Putin to end the war as soon as possible instead of applying maximum pressure on Russia, the instigator and aggressor. Trump said you have to listen to both sides to end a conflict.
What People Are Saying
On Monday, President Donald Trump posted to his Truth Social platform that the war would not have started if he had won the 2020 election, blaming his predecessor Joe Biden and Zelensky for “an absolutely horrible job in allowing this travesty to begin.”
“There were so many ways of preventing it from ever starting. But that is the past. Now we have to get it to STOP, AND FAST. SO SAD!” Trump wrote.
President Volodymyr Zelensky’s 60 Minutes interview aired on CBS the day before Trump’s post. “I believe, sadly, Russian narratives are prevailing in the U.S.,” Zelensky said in Ukrainian.
“How is it possible to witness our losses and our suffering, to understand what the Russians are doing, and to still believe that they are not the aggressors, that they did not start this war?
“This speaks to the enormous influence of Russia’s information policy on America, on U.S. politics, and U.S. politicians.”
Reliving the infamous Oval Office clash, Zelensky said: “First and foremost, we did not launch an attack [to start the war].
“It seems to me that the vice president is somehow justifying Putin’s actions. I tried to explain, ‘You can’t look for something in the middle. There is an aggressor and there is a victim. The Russians are the aggressor, and we are the victim.'”
What’s Next
Negotiations to bring about a full ceasefire—two partial truces on energy infrastructure and in the Black Sea have so far been agreed—continue between the U.S., Russia, and Ukraine.
However, Russian attacks on Ukraine such as those on Sumy and Kryvyi Rih, which killed dozens of civilians, threaten to derail the process. The ongoing Kyiv-Washington tensions are another complication to already fraught discussions.
