US Vice President JD Vance stressed on Wednesday that the conflict in Ukraine was the “most difficult war to resolve”, after the ceasefire found in Iran, also criticizing European leaders for “not doing enough”.
“In some ways we thought it would be the easiest, but it was the most difficult,” he added during a conference in front of students in Budapest where he has been visiting since Tuesday.
Ukrainian leaders called on the United States to pressure Moscow for a ceasefire and end more than four years of war, saying the truce in Iran had demonstrated the success of “American firmness.”
“We have been working on this for 14 months and we will continue,” said Mr. Vance, believing that “significant progress” had been made.
“We really succeeded in getting them to express their positions [aux Ukrainiens et aux Russes] and, over time, their positions became closer and closer,” he continued.
“We obviously have not yet achieved the final stage of necessary progress, but I am rather optimistic about that, because, fundamentally, the war has ceased to have any meaning,” he said, calling on both camps to “not quibble over a few square kilometers of territory”.
JD Vance also said he was “disappointed with a large part of the political class in Europe, because they do not seem particularly interested in resolving this specific conflict.”
“But we received a lot of help from some of our friends,” he continued, citing Italian leader Georgia Meloni and Hungarian nationalist Prime Minister Viktor Orban.
The latter, to whom he came to support a few days of legislative elections where he was the loser after 16 years in power, is “the most useful” because he “encouraged” the United States “to really understand the situation, to understand, from the point of view of both the Ukrainians and the Russians, what is necessary for them to end the conflict,” he said.
