United States Vice President JD Vance has said a negotiated settlement between Russia and Ukraine is unlikely to fully satisfy either side.
Speaking to Fox News' Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo, Vance said Washington was seeking an agreement that both Moscow and Kyiv could accept. "It's not going to make anybody super happy. Both the Russians and the Ukrainians, probably, at the end of the day, are going to be unhappy with it," he remarked.
His comments came after US President Donald Trump announced he would meet Russian President Vladimir Putin on August 15 in Alaska to discuss ending the war in Ukraine.
Trump said the two sides were close to a ceasefire deal that could end the three-and-a-half-year-old conflict, potentially involving Ukraine surrendering significant territory.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, however, said on Saturday that Ukraine cannot violate its constitution on territorial issues, adding, "Ukrainians will not gift their land to the occupiers."
In the Fox News interview recorded on Friday, Vance said the United States was working to schedule talks between Putin, Zelensky and Trump, but he did not think it would be productive for Putin to meet with Zelensky before speaking with Trump.
"We're at a point now where we're trying to figure out, frankly, scheduling and things like that, around when these three leaders could sit down and discuss an end to this conflict," he said.
A White House official said late on Saturday that Trump was open to a summit with both leaders, but that right now the White House was planning for the bilateral meeting requested by Putin.
