Faced with a stalling peace push, Vice President JD Vance said Sunday that Russia had made "significant concessions" in ending its war in Ukraine.
There is little public evidence, however, that Russian President Vladimir Putin has moved his ambitions an inch since launching his full-scale invasion in February 2022.
Vance told NBC News' "Meet the Press" on Sunday that the Kremlin had been “flexible on some of their core demands” — namely recognizing “that they are not going to be able to install a puppet regime” in Kyiv, and “that there is going to be some security guarantee to the territorial integrity of Ukraine.”
That appears at odds with Russian officials, who have spent the days since the Trump-Putin summit in Alaska pushing back on both of these points.
Also on “Meet the Press” was Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, who — while not advocating the installation of a Russian puppet — made no secret of Moscow’s belief that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is illegitimate.
Russia was open to Ukraine having security guarantees, Lavrov said last week — but only if the Kremlin can play a role in them, arguably rendering them useless.
"We cannot agree" to "resolve collective security issues without the Russian Federation. This will not work," he said at a news conference. "I am sure that in the West and above all in the United States they understand perfectly well that seriously discussing security issues without the Russian Federation is a utopia, a road to nowhere."
Far from being a new and significant concession, Lavrov made clear that the security guarantees should be based on talks held in Istanbul, in 2022.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on whether Russia has made compromises.
Despite Lavrov's trenchant remarks, there may be subtle hints that Putin is ready to do a deal — and that's without knowing what has gone on behind closed doors.
“We don’t know what was said at Alaska, that’s the problem," Mark Galeotti, the British-based director of the consultancy Mayak Intelligence, told NBC News. "It may well be that what Vance is saying reflects what Putin said there.”
Though Russian officials remain steadfast, Russia’s tightly controlled media have been noticeably less critical of the usually vilified Zelenskyy, he said. And academics close to the Kremlin have suggested there may be some wiggle-room to the Kremlin’s demands.
These are the latest machinations in Washington's attempts to halt a war Trump once told American voters he could resolve within 24 hours. In recent months the president has at times had threatened severe tariffs for Russia and its trading partners while setting several deadlines for a ceasefire — each time has extended the deadline for real action.
Zelenskyy said Monday he would meet with Trump's envoy retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg to discuss a possible summit between the Ukrainian and Russian presidents. Russia has rebuffed Trump's efforts to push forward with a summit.
Ukrainian and American teams will meet later this week, Zelenskyy said, and "after that, it seems we would like to understand from the American side, whether the Russians are ready" for a meeting "and in what configuration."
Many voices in Ukraine and Europe say Russia has not moved an inch.
These include European Union foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas, who said last week that “Russia has not made one single concession, and they are the ones who are the aggressor here.”
Vance also drew criticism and some mockery when he suggested that all wars ended in negotiation — including World War II. That conflict finished with Adolf Hitler killing himself in a bunker and the United States dropping two nuclear bombs on Japan, leading to the axis powers' unconditional surrender.
“Ah yes, who can forget the Hitler-Stalin-Truman summit that we still celebrate every 8 May, Negotiated Settlement in Europe Day,” read a sarcastic post on X by Jessica Berlin, a senior fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis, a Washington think tank, and a vocal supporter of Ukraine.
“Or when Emperor Hirohito and Truman cordially met in Hawaii to agree mutual territorial concessions and end the war. Those were the good old days.”
Trump's push to arrange such a spectacle between Russia and Ukraine continues, in spite of the Kremlin's public reticence.
"The mystery is compounded by a Russian negotiating style going back to Soviet days," Galeotti wrote in a column for Britain's Sunday Times newspaper. "Rather than a mutual dance of small concessions, inching towards agreement, the Kremlin tends to maintain ludicrous, even insultingly excessive demands until the last minute."
