American Vice President JD Vance said Wednesday his infamous Oval Office clash with Ukraine’s leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy was “useful” and helped bring disagreements between Washington and Kyiv to the fore.
Speaking to USA Today, Vance did signal some regret over the tense encounter in February, which shocked Europe and plunged transatlantic relations to a new low.
“Look, sometimes people disagree,” Vance said. “I mean, do I wish that we had had a blowup in the Oval Office in public? Not necessarily.”
But he added, “Do I think that it actually elucidated some of the real issues of disagreement between the United States side and the Ukrainian side? Yes, and I think that was useful for the American people to see.”
Zelenskyy visited the White House after U.S. President Donald Trump’s inauguration to shore up support for Ukraine in the face of Russia’s invasion. But his televised meeting with Trump and Vance in the Oval Office devolved into a bitter row, with Vance accusing Zelenskyy of being ungrateful and unwilling to engage in diplomacy with Moscow, three years into the Kremlin’s brutal war.
European leaders rallied around Zelenskyy in the following days, reiterating their unwavering support for Ukraine, while Germany’s Friedrich Merz implied the whole thing was an ambush, calling the angry quarrel a “deliberate escalation” by the Americans.
On Wednesday, Vance claimed his frustration during the Oval Office showdown wasn’t as much a reflection of his feelings about Zelenskyy, but was about the Biden administration, which he said gave billions in aid to Ukraine “without any real goal, any real diplomacy.”
“That was always what frustrated me far more than Zelenskyy was asking for help from Washington,” he said. “It was that the Biden administration had no plan for how to end the war.”
Vance said the Trump administration is now “pretty aligned with President Zelenskyy” on working toward a peace deal.
“Even though we have some disagreements, we, of course, want to protect Ukraine’s territorial integrity,” Vance said. “We don’t want Russia to conquer the entire country.”
Despite Trump’s efforts to broker an end to the conflict, Moscow has not backed down from its maximalist demands — namely that Ukraine give up vast, heavily fortified swathes of territory in its eastern Donbas region, which Russian troops have only partially occupied, and commit to never joining NATO. Trump has previously pressured Ukraine to accept those concessions.
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