Vice President J.D. Vance said the United States will use the threat of economic sanctions and military action as a cudgel to push Russian President Vladimir Putin into discussions to end the war in Ukraine.
"There are economic tools of leverage, there are of course military tools of leverage" that could be wielded against Putin, Vance told The Wall Street Journal on Thursday.
If the Kremlin fails to negotiate a peace deal in good faith, the possibility of sending American troops to Ukraine is "on the table," the vice president said.
Conversely, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ruled out the possibility of deploying U.S. troops to war-torn Ukraine during a meeting of the country's allies in Brussels on Wednesday.
According to the Journal, Hegseth said that "any security guarantee" provided to Kyiv "must be backed by capable European and non-European troops" to avoid a return to war.
He later clarified his remarks, telling reporters that "what concessions will be made or what concessions will not be made" will be decided by President Donald Trump.
Vance's comments came one day before a meeting between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and a U.S. delegation at the Munich Security Conference in Germany. Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and special envoy Keith Kellogg were expected to be included in the American contingent, and the meeting is expected to focus on ending the war.
"The president is not going to go in this with blinders on," Vance said of Trump's interest in brokering a deal between Russia and Ukraine. "He's going to say, 'Everything is on the table; let's make a deal.'"
The vice president declared that Ukraine's independence would be a condition of any deal with Putin, but he would not get into specifics about how much of Kyiv's territory currently held by Russia would be retained by Moscow.
"There are any number of formulations, of configurations, but we do care about Ukraine having sovereign independence," Vance told the Journal.
He suggested that the issue was one of several details that would be hammered out during settlement talks.
He also indicated that Trump could decide to add or remove things from the negotiating table, depending on how the talks progress.
"President Trump could say, look, we don't want this thing, we might not like this thing, but we're willing to put it back on the table if the Russians aren't being good negotiating partners, or there are things that are very important to Ukrainians that we might want to take off the table," Vance said.
Trump said on Wednesday that he and Putin had agreed to open talks "immediately" to end the nearly-three year war.
"[W]e want to stop the millions of deaths taking place in the War with Russia/Ukraine," Trump posted on Truth Social.
Nicole Weatherholtz ✉
Nicole Weatherholtz, a Newsmax general assignment reporter covers news, politics, and culture. She is a National Newspaper Association award-winning journalist.
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