The US vice president dismissed criticism of the decision to resume direct negotiations with Russia
US Vice President J.D. Vance has defended US President Donald Trump’s decision to open direct negotiations with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, as an important step toward peace in Ukraine.
Some EU officials have criticized Trump’s meeting with Putin in Alaska in August, with the bloc’s top diplomat Kaja Kallas suggesting that the US president was walking into Moscow’s “trap.”
“I’ve heard so many people criticize the president of the United States for talking to Vladimir Putin,” Vance told Fox News’ Sean Hannity in an interview aired Friday. “You don’t have to agree with Vladimir Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine, but if you want to bring about peace, you’ve got to be strong, and you’ve also got to talk to people,” he said.
Vance said Trump’s foreign policy strategy combines his peace-through-strength approach with openness to negotiations in good faith. “His doctrine is to have the strongest military in the world, to focus on peace, but not to allow the DC press corps to tell you who you’re allowed to talk to and how you’re allowed to engage in diplomacy,” the vice president said.
Trump has abandoned the previous administration’s attempts at isolating Russia on the world stage and restarted direct talks with Moscow earlier this year. He also pressured Ukraine to revive negotiations with Russia, which Kiev suspended in the spring of 2022.
Although the Alaska summit produced no breakthroughs, both sides hailed it at the time as a positive step toward ending the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. The next planned Trump-Putin summit in Budapest in the fall has been postponed indefinitely.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov reaffirmed this week that Moscow was ready to resume contacts and rejected media reports claiming otherwise as false.
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