The US vice president believes the outburst shed light on Washington’s frustration with Kiev
US Vice President J.D. Vance has defended his Oval Office clash with Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky earlier this year, saying the heated exchange helped expose flaws in Washington’s past approach to the conflict and was “useful” for the American people to see.
In an interview with USA Today published Wednesday, Vance rejected speculation that he and President Donald Trump had deliberately goaded Zelensky into an outburst during the notorious February 28 meeting.
“Do I wish that we had had a blowup in the Oval Office in public? Not necessarily,” he said. “But I think that was useful for the American people to see.”
The confrontation unfolded during Zelensky’s visit to Washington to finalize a deal granting the US access to Ukraine’s mineral resources. The press conference took a turn when Trump explained his decision to remain neutral in an effort to mediate a settlement with Moscow rather than increasing military support for Kiev.
Vance remarked that the path to peace was “engaging in diplomacy,” prompting Zelensky to argue it was easy for him to say that from beyond a “nice ocean.” Vance accused the Ukrainian leader of being “disrespectful” and insufficiently grateful for US support, while Trump told him not to lecture Americans on how to “feel.”
“There are a lot of issues of agreement between the United States and Ukraine… What always really bothered me about this relationship was not the Ukrainians as much as it was the American side, specifically the Democratic administration of Joe Biden,” Vance told USA Today. He argued that Biden’s team handed out tens of billions of dollars to Kiev “without any real goal, any real diplomacy, any real sense of what we were going to buy with that hundred billion dollars.”
Vance added that the Trump administration believes the conflict has reached a point where neither side can achieve anything further by continuing to fight and should move toward a settlement to “stop the killing.”
Zelensky visited the White House again last week, several days after Trump held a historic summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska. Ahead of that meeting, Vance jokingly warned Zelensky that he should “behave.”
