Speaking to reporters in Agra, India, Vice President JD Vance discussed the Ukraine-Russia War.
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00:00You said that you were optimistic the other day when you were meeting with Maloney about ending the brutal Ukraine-Russia war.
00:07At this point, based on where negotiations are, what do you think is next in that process?
00:12And do you think that the U.S. should still hang on and take part in those negotiations?
00:17Well, I'm going to echo something Secretary Rubio said, which is, look, we've issued a very explicit proposal to both the Russians and the Ukrainians,
00:25and it's time for them to either say yes or for the United States to walk away from this process.
00:30We've engaged in an extraordinary amount of diplomacy, of on-the-ground work.
00:35We've really tried to understand things from the perspective of both the Ukrainians and the Russians.
00:39What do Ukrainians care the most about? What do the Russians care the most about?
00:43And I think that we've put together a very fair proposal.
00:46We're going to see if the Europeans, the Russians, and the Ukrainians are ultimately able to get this thing over the finish line.
00:52Again, I feel pretty optimistic about it.
00:55I think everybody has been negotiating in good faith, but it's now time, I think, to take, if not the final step, one of the final steps,
01:02which is, at a broad level, the party's saying, we're going to stop the killing,
01:06we're going to freeze the territorial lines at some level close to where they are today,
01:11and we're going to actually put in place the kind of long-term diplomatic settlement that hopefully will lead to long-term peace.
01:17I'm going to take one more question before the kids start banging on the airplane windows.
01:21So just to clarify, so you want the current lines of war in the war in Ukraine to remain the same under your proposal?
01:28No, I didn't say that.
01:29What I said is the current lines, somewhere close to them, is where you're ultimately, I think, going to draw the new lines in the conflict.
01:36Now, of course, that means the Ukrainians and the Russians are both going to have to give up some of the territory they currently own.
01:42There's going to have to be some territorial swaps, so I wouldn't say the exact lines, but we want the killing to stop.
01:48And the only way to really stop the killing is for the armies to both put down their weapons to freeze this thing
01:54and to get on with the business of actually building a better Russia and a better Ukraine.
01:58We're certainly invested in that effort.
02:00We hope the Russians and Ukrainians will meet us halfway.
02:02We hope the Russians and Ukrainians will meet us halfway.