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.
NBC News has reached out to the White House 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.
