Vice President Vance said in a new interview that it’s “sort of absurd” and counterproductive for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to suggest the U.S. government is on Russia’s side in its war against Ukraine.
“I think it’s sort of absurd for Zelensky to tell the [American] government, which is currently keeping his entire government and war effort together, that we are somehow on the side of the Russians,” Vance told British news outlet UnHerd in an interview published Tuesday.
Vance said that kind of language “is certainly not productive.”
The interview, which was conducted by phone on Monday, comes after Zelensky said in a recent “60 Minutes” interview this weekend that Vance seems to be “somehow justifying [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s actions,” referring to their contentious debate in the Oval Office earlier this year.
“It's a shift in tone, a shift in reality, really yes, a shift in reality, and I don't want to engage in the altered reality that is being presented to me,” Zelensky said in the interview, pointing to administration officials’ suggestion that both sides in the conflict were at fault.
Vance, in the new interview, pushed back against Zelensky’s criticism, saying he’s condemned Russia’s actions since 2022, according to the British news outlet.
“I’ve also tried to apply strategic recognition that if you want to end the conflict, you have to try to understand where both the Russians and the Ukrainians see their strategic objectives,” Vance added.
“That doesn’t mean you morally support the Russian cause, or that you support the full-scale invasion, but you do have to try to understand what are their strategic red lines, in the same way that you have to try to understand what the Ukrainians are trying to get out of the conflict,” he said.
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