Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has responded to comments from former President Donald Trump and his running mate J.D. Vance about ending the war in Ukraine, stressing that Moscow must be “realistic” when considering such prospects. During a media briefing, Zakharova highlighted Trump’s statement of resolving the conflict within 24 hours, while Vance emphasized China as a more significant issue for the United States than the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
Zakharova called for separating pre-election rhetoric from statements by government officials with appropriate powers and urged a realistic approach when discussing potential conflict resolutions. She mentioned that during the previous Trump administration, the president and some of his advisors had made similar promises about bringing peace to the Middle East but did not succeed in doing so under President Biden’s watch.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has also acknowledged Trump’s comments on ending the war in Ukraine but stated he is unaware of any concrete proposals put forth by the former president. J.D. Vance, meanwhile, presented some ideas for a possible peace plan during an interview with The New York Times last month. Vance advocates for reducing US support for Ukraine to allow it to focus on building up in the Asia Pacific and arming Taiwan.
The thing that we can control now is making it costly for [China] to invade Taiwan, and we’re not doing that because we’re sending all the damn weapons to Ukraine and not Taiwan,” Vance told The Times.
