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Vice President JD Vance described the “real breakdown” between US-Ukraine relations on Monday as being Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s “clear unwillingness to engage in the peace process.”
However, the vice president told Fox News host Sean Hannity that he expects Zelensky to “get there eventually.”
“I really don’t care what President Zelensky says about me or anybody else,” Vance told the Fox News host. “But he showed a clear unwillingness to engage in the peace process that President Trump has said is the policy of the American people and of their president.”
“That’s the real breakdown.”
Vance acknowledged that it was his remark about engaging in “diplomacy” with Russian President Vladimir Putin that “set Zelensky off” during the heated Oval Office meeting Friday.
The vice president insisted the tense meeting was expected to be a “rah rah moment” for Washington and Kyiv, and even though it “went off the rails,” President Trump is still willing to engage with the Ukrainian side.
“When they’re willing to talk peace I think President Trump will be the first person to pick up the phone,” Vance said.
The vice president also took issue with the way European leaders have been talking up Zelensky, arguing that they are actually doing the Ukrainians a “disservice.”
“I think our European friends, frankly, are really doing a disservice to the Ukrainians because their own populations are saying, ‘We’re not going to fund this war indefinitely,’” Vance argued.
“Zelensky, he goes to Europe and a lot of our European friends puff him up, They say, you know, ‘You’re a freedom fighter. You need to keep fighting forever.’ Well, fighting forever with what? With whose money? With whose ammunition? and with whose lives? The president is actually taking a much more realistic perspective and saying, ‘This can’t go on forever. We can’t fund this thing forever. The Ukrainians can’t fight forever. So let’s bring this thing to a peaceful settlement,’” he added.
Vance further suggested that behind closed doors, European leaders have a much different view of the three-year-long war.
“When you talk to leaders in private, whether they’re Ukrainian or European, when you talk to people in private, they will tell you this cannot go on forever,” he said. “There aren’t enough Ukrainian lives, there isn’t enough American money, and there isn’t enough ammunition to fund this thing indefinitely.”
“The only realistic pathway to bring this thing to a settlement is President Trump’s pathway. We encourage both President Zelensky and President Putin to follow that path.”
The Trump administration on Monday moved to pause military aid to Ukraine in the aftermath of the disastrous Trump-Zelensky meeting, and the Ukrainian president’s continued insistence that the end of the war is still “very, very far away.”
