Vice President JD Vance talks to reporters on board Air Force Two at Leonardo da Vinci International Airport in Rome on May 19, 2025.
Vance has adopted an outspoken approach as vice president, starting off with his fiery February statements at the Munich Security Council in which he asserted that Europe needed to "step up in a big way to provide for its own defense."
That boldness has carried over into the Russia-Ukraine negotiations, where Vance has taken a proactive approach, at times appearing to be forging his own path.
Vance and Rubio engaged in discussions to end the conflict in Ukraine with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in Rome on Sunday, among other issues. Vance and Rubio also discussed the Trump administration's efforts to end the war with Vatican prelate Archbishop Paul Richard Gallagher on Monday.
Aboard Air Force Two on Monday, Vance said the negotiations had reached "a bit of [an] impasse" between the two countries and that the conflict is not the Trump administration’s war to wage but rather belongs to former President Joe Biden and Putin.
"There is fundamental mistrust between Russia and the West. It's one of the things the president thinks is, frankly, stupid, that we should be able to move beyond," Vance told reporters. "The mistakes that have been made in the past, but ... that takes two to tango."
"I know the president's willing to do that, but if Russia's not willing to do that, then we're eventually just going to have to say ... this is not our war," Vance said. "It's Joe Biden's war, it's Vladimir Putin's war. It's not our war. We're going to try to end it, but if we can't end it, we're eventually going to say, 'You know what? That was worth a try, but we're not doing it anymore.'"
TRUMP INSISTS UKRAINE-RUSSIA PEACE DEAL IS CLOSE, BUT MISTRUST IN PUTIN LEAVES EXPERTS SKEPTICAL
President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky get into an argument in the Oval Office. (Getty)
"Do you think that it's respectful to come to the Oval Office of the United States of America and attack the administration that is trying to prevent the destruction of your country?" Vance asked at the Oval Office meeting.
Almost immediately after the U.S. signed a minerals deal with Ukraine on May 1, Vance said the war in Ukraine wouldn't end in the near future, despite the fact that Trump indicated the previous week that an agreement was on the horizon.
"It’s not going anywhere," Vance told Fox News on May 1. "It’s not going to end anytime soon."
Still, he characterized the agreement as "good progress" in the negotiations.
Trump and Putin spoke over the phone Monday to advance peace negotiations to halt the conflict between Moscow and Kyiv, just days after Russia and Ukraine met in Turkey to conduct their first peace talks since 2022.
After the call, Trump said both countries would move toward a ceasefire and advance talks to end the war.
Meanwhile, Trump has suggested continued U.S. involvement may not be a viable option moving forward, but he has been reticent about specifics on what would actually prompt him to walk away from the talks. For example, Trump said on May 8 in an interview with NBC News that he believes peace is possible but that the U.S. wouldn't act as a mediator forever.
"Well, there will be a time when I will say, 'OK, keep going, keep being stupid," Trump said in the interview.
"Maybe it's not possible to do," he said. "There's tremendous hatred."
Still, Trump signaled that the U.S. would take a backseat in the negotiations between Moscow and Kyiv after his call with Putin.
"The conditions for that will be negotiated between the two parties, as it can only be, because they know the details of a negotiation that nobody else would be aware of," Trump said in a Monday post on Truth Social.
Trump has continued to distance the U.S. from the conflict, and he later described the conflict as a "European situation."
"Big egos involved, but I think something's going to happen," Trump told reporters on Monday. "And if it doesn't, I'll just back away and they'll have to keep going. This was a European situation. It should have remained a European situation."
Trump also doubled down on extracting the U.S. from the war, claiming it didn't involve U.S. personnel.
"It's not our people, it's not our soldiers … it's Ukraine and it's Russia," Trump said in the Oval Office on Wednesday while hosting South African President Cyril Ramaphosa.
TRUMP SAYS HE COULD ‘WALK AWAY’ FROM RUSSIA-UKRAINE TALKS, CITES ‘TREMENDOUS HATRED’ ON BOTH SIDES
Vice President JD Vance and Foundation Council President Wolfgang Ischinger participate in a discussion at the Munich Leaders Meeting hosted by the Munich Security Conference in Washington on May 7, 2025. (Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images)
According to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, sanctions against Russia could ramp up in the event Russia fails to cooperate.
"President Trump has made it very clear that if President Putin does not negotiate in good faith that the United States will not hesitate to up the Russia sanctions along with our European partners," Bessent said Sunday in an interview with NBC.
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Vance has previously said the concessions that Russia is seeking from Ukraine to end the conflict are too stringent but believes there is a viable path to peace and wants both to find common ground.
"The step that we would like to make right now is we would like both the Russians and the Ukrainians to actually agree on some basic guidelines for sitting down and talking to one another," Vance said at the Munich Leaders Meeting in Washington on May 7.
Russia's demands include Ukraine never joining NATO and preventing foreign peacekeeper troops from deploying to Ukraine after the conflict. Russia is also seeking to adjust some of the borders that previously were Ukraine's.
Diana Stancy is a politics reporter with Fox News Digital covering the White House.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/vance-remark-about-us-bailing-ukraine-encourage-putin-sink-nascent-peace-talks