Vice President JD Vance said Russian President Vladimir Putin will not install a “puppet regime” in Ukraine after the war between Russia and Ukraine has concluded.
The vice president made the remarks in an interview on Sunday with Kristen Welker on NBC News’s Meet the Press while discussing the aftermath of President Donald Trump’s meeting and subsequent communications with Putin. Vance also praised Trump’s “energetic diplomacy” while pursuing peace negotiations to end the conflict.
Vance said Russia was prepared to make some concessions in peace negotiations, but not everything, as of yet. He stressed that there was still work and a long way to go.
“But what they have conceded is the recognition that Ukraine will have territorial integrity after the war,” Vance said. “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,” he added. “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.”
Vance then pivoted to praise for Trump, highlighting that the president was more focused on getting a peace deal established to stop the killing, instead of harping on the causes of the war or what transpired over the last 3 1/2 years, including failures by the Biden administration to try to arrange a peace deal.
“And what … I admire about the president in this moment is he’s not asking 3 1/2 years ago,” Vance said. “He’s not, you know, trying to focus on every nitpicky detail of how this thing started 3 1/2 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?”
Vance also acknowledged that Russia has done “a lot of things” that the United States did not support or “like,” including the strike against an American electronics manufacturer in Ukraine.
“I don’t like it, Kristen,” Vance said. “But this is a war. And this is why we want to stop the killing. The Russians have done a lot of things that we don’t like. A lot of civilians have died. We’ve condemned that stuff from the get-go. And frankly, President Trump has done more to apply pressure and to apply economic leverage to the Russians, certainly, than Joe Biden did for 3 1/2 years when he did nothing but talk, but do nothing to bring the killing to a stop. So you asked me what I’m enraged by. What I’m enraged by is the continuation of the war. What I’m enraged by is a presidency in Joe Biden who, for three years, did nothing to end the killing.”
He then praised Trump’s diplomatic efforts and said that such initiatives were a legitimate attempt to end the war and establish a peace deal. He cited the Trump administration’s “energetic diplomacy.”
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“What I’m actually excited about right now is that we have a president who’s engaging in energetic diplomacy to try to stop the killing,” Vance said. “That’s as it should be. I think the American people should be proud of it. And whatever the outcome of this, whether the war ends in three months or six months or hopefully not beyond, but maybe, we should be proud that we have a president who’s trying to stop the killing.”
“He’s done it, by the way, six wars that the president has brought to a close all over the world,” Vance emphasized. “This would be the seventh. It’s the most complicated, but we’re trying despite that.”
