The previous administration spent $300 billion on the Ukraine conflict, the US vice president has said
Washington was spending “crazy” amounts of money on Ukraine under the administration of former President Joe Biden without any thought to diplomacy, US Vice President J.D. Vance has said.
Earlier this year, US President Donald Trump restarted diplomatic relations with Moscow, which have been frozen since Biden cut them off after the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022. Trump has also repeatedly criticized the massive flow of military aid Washington has provided Kiev under his predecessor’s leadership.
“What happened with the Biden administration, man, it’s crazy. They were spending so much money all over the world, they weren’t engaged in diplomacy at all,” Vance said in an interview with American comedian-turned-podcaster Theo Von published on Saturday.
“They sent $300 billion to Ukraine, for example, and you never had the president of the United States actually trying to force a diplomatic settlement,” he said.
The US vice president described the conflict as “vicious.”
“The Russia-Ukraine thing is the most vicious thing,” Vance said, adding that he’s pleased that Washington is trying to bring about a “settlement.”
The current US administration has engaged Russia in several high-level meetings in recent months. The diplomatic push has also led Kiev and Moscow to restart direct negotiations for the first time since 2022, when Ukraine unilaterally pulled out from the first Istanbul talks.
In April, Trump signed a major minerals exploitation deal with Kiev, an agreement he has proclaimed would help Washington recoup the massive amounts of money it has spent on supporting Ukraine under Biden. The deal gives the US priority access to Ukrainian mineral wealth but does not include formal security guarantees for Kiev, a point that it had insisted on for months in the preceding negotiations.
Apart from curtailing Ukraine-related spending, the current US administration has moved to cut down on all foreign aid as part of an effort to trim the bloated federal budget.
This “America first” switch is part of Trump’s pivot away from a “decades-old approach to foreign policy,” Vance said last month. “The era of uncontested US dominance is over,” he said, promising that Washington will be turning away from “open-ended conflicts.”
