Vice President J.D. Vance, who met with Volodymyr Zelenskyy last week at the Munich Security Conference, stated on Wednesday that Ukraine’s leader is making a mistake by criticizing President Donald Trump, who is aiming for a swift end to the nearly three-year-old war with Russia.
On Wednesday, Trump and Zelenskyy exchanged criticisms, with Trump accusing Ukraine’s president on Truth Social of not holding elections, stating, “the only thing he was good at was playing [Joe] Biden ‘like a fiddle,'” and labeling him a “Dictator without elections.” Additionally, Trump told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida on Tuesday that Ukraine “should have never started” the war, which is approaching its third anniversary on Monday, and “could have made a deal” to end it.
Zelenskyy, frustrated that the U.S. initiated peace talks with Russia first, responded on Wednesday that Trump was living in a Russian-made “disinformation space.” These comments came shortly before his meeting in Kyiv with retired U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg, Trump’s special envoy to Ukraine and Russia. “The idea that Zelenskyy is going to change the president’s mind by criticizing him in public media…everyone who knows the president will tell you that is a terrible way to deal with this administration,” Vance told the Daily Mail from his office in the west wing of the White House.
Vance mentioned that Zelenskyy has been receiving poor advice on how to handle the Trump administration, having been told by the Biden administration over the past three years that he could do no wrong.
“We love the Ukrainian people,” Vance said. “We admire the bravery of the soldiers, but we also believe that this war needs to come to a swift end.
“That is the policy of the president of the United States. It is not based on Russian disinformation. It’s based on the fact that Donald Trump, in my opinion, knows a lot about geopolitics and has held a strong view for a very long time.”
During a news conference on Wednesday morning in Kyiv, a day after U.S. and Russian officials met in Saudi Arabia to start peace negotiations, Zelenskyy criticized Trump. “Unfortunately, President Trump— I have great respect for him as a leader of a nation that we greatly respect, the American people who always support us— unfortunately, lives in this disinformation space,” he said, according to the Daily Mail.
Zelenskyy told Newsmax on Friday that Trump “has [to] make a deal, not with [Russian President Vladimir] Putin, with us, and then pressure Putin. Because any negotiations without us, we will never accept because the war is in Ukraine, not elsewhere.” Secretary of State Marco Rubio mentioned to reporters in Saudi Arabia that any final agreement must be acceptable to Ukraine and Europe, as well as Russia.
