JD Vance Sidesteps Two Questions About Putin’s Stalling From Fox’s Bill Hemmer

Vice President JD Vance dodged multiple questions from Fox News anchor Bill Hemmer about whether Russian dictator Vladimir Putin is holding up peace talks with Ukraine.

The morning after President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address, Vance on Wednesday appeared on Fox for a wide-ranging interview covering a number of international issues. Shifting over to the topic of the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine, Hemmer asked the vice president if he believes Putin is responsible for peace talks not making significant progress.

“[For] five years now, Eastern Europe has been exploding,” Hemmer began. “Is Vladimir Putin simply putting you off in these on-again-off-again talks as they go?”

In response, Vance explained that both sides have “red lines” on which they’re unwilling to compromise, adding:

Bill, I think we’ve been engaged in very, very deliberate negotiations with both the Russians and the Ukrainians. Obviously, the Russians have some red lines; the Ukrainians have some red lines; and the president has just set the entire team — from Marco Rubio on down — to try to bring the killing to a close. You know, it’s hard. As the president has said multiple times, he thought this was going to be the easiest war to solve. I agreed with him. It has turned out to be much more difficult, but I think that we’re making progress, Bill. I think we’re making progress with both the Russians and the Ukrainians.

And we’re just going to keep working at it. Eventually, we’re either going to be successful or we’re not going to be. Right now, I think the president has some good optimism that we can bring this thing to a successful close. It’s bad for the world. It’s bad for America, so we’re going to keep working at it.

Hemmer, however, pressed further on the subject.

“You can certainly understand how people look at this from the outside and think that Putin is just buying time, right?” he said.

Vance said that he understood how one could make that assumption — and even acknowledged that Putin “hasn’t stopped the killing” — but maintained that the Trump administration is “optimistic” that the war can be brought to an end at the negotiating table.

Watch above via Fox News.

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