Vice President JD Vance has touted his boss’s “energetic diplomacy” with Russia, and insisted that the Trump administration would bring the three-year-long war between Ukraine and Russia to an end.
But as his remarks aired on NBC’s Meet the Press Sunday, Russia’s top diplomat was making that prospect look unlikely — while walking back progress made between Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, Volodymyr Zelensky and a host of European leaders in a whirlwind series of meetings over the past two weeks.
Vance told NBC’s Kristen Welker, in a pre-taped interview, that both sides had signaled their openness to accepting “significant concessions” in recent days, and said that the president was open to increasing pressure if one side was seen as an obstacle to peace.
“This is the energetic diplomacy that’s going to bring this war to a close,” Vance said. “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. We’re going to keep on doing what we have to do to bring this thing to a close.”
He added that Russia’s Vladimir Putin “made significant concessions to President Trump for the first time in 3 ½ years of this conflict” during his summit with Trump on August 15 in Anchorage, Alaska.
“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,” said the vice president.
He was unable to name specific areas where the Trump administration was making progress, however, as Russian and U.S. officials have given different interpretations of what was agreed upon at the Alaska summit.
But the two concessions named by U.S. officials in the wake of that summit — a Ukrainian security guarantee and the prospect of a meeting between Zelensky and Putin within two weeks — now both seem on the edge of disappearing, if they haven’t already collapsed.
Russia’s top envoy, Sergey Lavrov, appeared separately Sunday on Meet the Press and said that no Putin-Zelensky meeting was on the table in the immediate term.
“Putin is ready to meet with Zelenskyy when the agenda is ready for a summit, and this agenda is not ready at all,” Lavrov said.
The Russian diplomat’s comments come as Donald Trump confirmed Friday that he informed Putin that he was “not happy” about a Russia strike against a factory in Ukraine this past week that is owned by a U.S. company. The attack in the town of Mukachevo, which injured at least 15 people, was part of a larger wave of Russian airstrikes.
On his Sunday appearace, Lavrov proceeded to denounce the Ukrainian president and claimed that Zelensky was refusing to accept that Ukraine would be blocked from joining NATO under a peace agreement.
“It was very clear to everybody that there are several principles which Washington believes must be accepted, including no NATO membership, including the discussion of territorial issues, and Zelensky said no to everything,” said Lavrov.
“He even said no to, as I said, to canceling legislation prohibiting the Russian language. How can we meet with a person who is pretending to be a leader?”
European leaders who met with Trump at the White House Monday touted the brokering of that potential Zelensky-Putin sitdown as a major development in the peace process.
Russia’s recognition of the ability of Ukraine to sign security guarantees with the U.S. and other European nations similarly was seen as a major concession, but the Kremlin reportedly dismissed the prospect of troops from NATO countries on the ground in Ukraine after the U.S. president’s meeting with Zelensky.
Trump’s own press secretary confirmed this past week that the White House would not consider deploying troops to Ukraine were it attacked again.
