President Trump revealed that he’s open to favoring Ukraine in its war with Russia despite his qualms with President Volodymyr Zelensky, while Vice President JD Vance bluntly assessed Monday that Kyiv can’t win the fight on its current trajectory.
Trump, 78, was asked during a wide-ranging interview with the Atlantic magazine whether there was anything Russian tyrant Vladimir Putin “could do that would cause you to say, “You know what? I’m on Zelensky’s side now.’”
“Not necessarily on Zelensky’s side, but on Ukraine’s side, yes,” Trump replied, according to a transcript of the sitdown. “But not necessarily on Zelensky’s side. I’ve had a hard time with Zelensky. You saw that over here [Feb. 28] when he was sitting right in that chair, when he just couldn’t get it.“
The president was also coy when asked whether he would ever show “full-blown support for Ukraine” by sending additional weapons packages.
“Doesn’t have to be weapons. There are many forms of weapons,” Trump replied. “It can be weapons with sanctions. It can be weapons with banking. It can be many other weapons.”
Trump met with Zelensky for 15 minutes in St. Peter’s Basilica ahead of the funeral of Pope Francis, marking the leaders’ first face-to-face since the infamous Oval Office meeting that ended in a full-blown argument involving Vance.
Following that meeting, Trump lashed out at Putin and suggested that he would punish Moscow.
“There was no reason for Putin to be shooting missiles into civilian areas, cities and towns, over the last few days,” Trump wrote on Truth Social Saturday.
“It makes me think that maybe he doesn’t want to stop the war, he’s just tapping me along, and has to be dealt with differently, through ‘Banking’ or ‘Secondary Sanctions?’ Too many people are dying!!!”
Meanwhile, on Monday, Vance, 40, delivered a hearty defense of Trump’s efforts to broker a peace agreement in the 38-month-old war.
“Have the Russians and Ukrainians stopped fighting? No, but have we made more progress in three months than we made the previous three years? Absolutely,” Vance told Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk.
“And you have even the Ukrainians, the Europeans, the Russians, all sort of simultaneously admitting, sometimes begrudgingly, that Donald Trump’s diplomacy has advanced the ball there.”
Vance then warned that while he “can’t say [with] 100% certainty” that peace would be achieved, he was certain that “if this doesn’t stop, the Ukrainians aren’t winning the war.
“I think there’s this weird idea among the mainstream media that if this thing goes on for just another few years, the Russians will collapse, the Ukrainians will take their territory back, and everything will go back to the way it was before the war,” he added. “That is not the reality we live in.”
Vance also predicted that continued fighting would leave Russia and Ukraine grappling with a demographic “nightmare” and risk “escalating it to a nuclear war.”
Both Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio have suggested that the White House could wash its collective hands of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, but Trump has declined to specify a deadline for the administration to walk away.
“We’ll have to see what happens over the next period of pretty much a week,” the president told the Atlantic. “We’re down to final strokes. And again, this is [former President Joe] Biden’s war. I’m not gonna get saddled — I don’t wanna be saddled with it. It’s a terrible war. Should have never happened. It would’ve never happened, as sure as you’re sitting there.”
Meanwhile, Putin announced plans for a three-day cease-fire beginning May 8 to mark the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe.
“For some reason everyone is supposed to wait until May 8 before ceasing fire — just to provide Putin with silence for his parade,” Zelensky fumed Monday. “We value human lives, not parades. That’s why we believe — and the world believes — that there is no reason to wait until May 8.”
“[A cease-fire] must be immediate, full, and unconditional — for at least 30 days to ensure it is secure and guaranteed. This is the foundation that could lead to real diplomacy. We reaffirm this proposal,” he added. “The American proposal also remains on the table.”
