US Vice President JD Vance has said Russia has made “significant concessions” toward a negotiated settlement in its war with Ukraine, voicing confidence that progress is being made even though the conflict shows no signs of ending soon.
In an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press with Kristen Welker”, US Vice President JD Vance said Russian President Vladimir Putin had put forward several concessions, including an agreement that Ukraine would receive security guarantees against future Russian aggression.
“I think the Russians have made significant concessions to President Trump for the first time in three and a half years of this conflict,” Vance said in remarks aired on Sunday.
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“They’ve recognised 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.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 sparked a war that has claimed tens of thousands of lives. According to sources cited by Reuters, Putin is demanding that Ukraine cede the eastern Donbas region, abandon plans to join NATO, adopt neutrality, and bar Western troops from its territory in exchange for halting Russia’s offensive.
Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov said in an interview broadcast on Sunday that a group of countries, including United Nations Security Council members, should act as guarantors of Ukraine’s security.
On Friday, President Donald Trump renewed a threat to impose sanctions on Russia if there was no progress toward a peaceful settlement within two weeks, signalling frustration with Moscow a week after his meeting with Putin in Alaska.
Vance said sanctions would be weighed on a case-by-case basis, while acknowledging that new penalties were unlikely to push Russia into agreeing to a ceasefire.
He pointed to Trump’s recent decision to impose an additional 25 per cent tariff on Indian goods—meant as punishment for New Delhi’s purchases of Russian oil—as an example of the kind of economic leverage that would be used to press for peace.
“He’s tried to make it clear that Russia can be re-invited into the world economy if they stop the killing, but they’re going to continue to be isolated if they don’t stop the killing,” Vance said.
(With Reuters inputs)
