On Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Vice President JD Vance said the Russians have made “significant concessions” to President Donald Trump in the negotiations to end the Russia-Ukraine war.
Partial transcript as follows:
WELKER: Let’s turn to the war in Ukraine. I had the opportunity to speak with the Russian foreign minister. He says, as of right now, there’s no meeting planned between President Putin and President Zelenskyy. And he added, “There needs to be an agenda first,” saying, quote, “This agenda is not ready at all.” Are the Russians stringing President Trump along?
VANCE: No, not at all, Kristen. I think the Russians have made significant concessions to President Trump for the first time in three and a half years of this conflict. They’ve actually been willing to be flexible on some of their core demands. They’ve talked about what would be necessary to end the war. Of course, they haven’t been completely there yet, or the war would be over. But we’re engaging in this diplomatic process in good faith. We are trying to negotiate as much as we can with both the Russians and the Ukrainians to find a middle ground to stop the killing. I think what the president has tried to do here is try to engage in very aggressive, very energetic diplomacy because this war is not in anyone’s interest. It’s not in Europe or the United States’s interest. We don’t think it’s in Russia or Ukraine’s interest to keep going. So we’re going to keep on pushing for a diplomatic solution. And one final point about this, Kristen. If you look historically, whenever you have a complicated war with a lot of death and destruction, it kind of goes in fits and starts. There are hills and valleys to the negotiation. We sometimes feel like we’ve made great progress with the Russians, and sometimes, as the president has said, he’s been very frustrated with the Russians. And we’re going to keep on doing what we have to do to bring this thing to a close. I don’t think it’s going to happen overnight. I think that we’re going to continue to make progress. But, ultimately, whether the killing stops, that determination is going to belong to whether the Russians and Ukrainians can actually find some middle ground here.
WELKER: Well, you talk about concessions. And yet, the Russians rejected the ceasefire proposal that President Trump put forward. There’s no meeting planned between President Putin and President Zelenskyy. And this week, Russia targeted an American factory in Ukraine. There were 600 people inside at the time. No one was killed. What makes you think President Putin is serious about peace?
VANCE: Well, I didn’t say they conceded on everything. But what they have conceded is the recognition that Ukraine will have territorial integrity after the war. They’ve recognized that they’re not going to be able to install a puppet regime in Kyiv. That was, of course, a major demand at the beginning. And importantly, they’ve acknowledged that there is going to be some security guarantee to the territorial integrity of Ukraine. Again, have they made every concession? Of course, they haven’t. Should they have started the war? Of course, they haven’t. But we’re making progress, Kristen. And what I, I admire about the president in this moment is he’s not asking three and a half years ago. He’s not, you know, trying to focus on every nitpicky detail of how this thing started three and a half years ago. He’s trying to focus on the nitpicky details of now, of what do the parties disagree on? What do they agree on? And how do you build a foundation from one side of that ledger to the other so that you can stop the killing?
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