US Vice President J.D. Vance has said he is “optimistic” about talks with Russia to end the war in Ukraine.
“As the negotiations continue, I won’t get ahead of them, but we are optimistic and hopeful that we can end this war, this very brutal war,” Vance said without elaborating on the details.
He made the statement during a meeting with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Maloney in Rome.
Earlier today, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that Washington is ready to withdraw from the negotiation process due to the lack of progress.
Marco Rubio said he spoke by phone during talks in Paris with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and that he informed him of the constructive talks and the offer to Ukraine that the Ukrainian team is expected to discuss in the coming days. “They will take a few days to think about this issue and will come back to us early next week,” Rubio clarified regarding Ukraine.
On 17 April, Paris hosted meetings between representatives of Ukraine, the United States and Europe on ending the Russian-Ukrainian war. According to French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot, the next round of talks will be held in London next week.
Recently, US President Donald Trump has said several times that Russia needs to move from words to deeds and show its desire for peace. At the same time, the US president said that the responsibility for the war lies not only with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who unleashed it, but also with Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky and Trump’s predecessor as US president, Joe Biden, who, according to Trump, did nothing to avoid it.