By Nandita Bose
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. Vice President JD Vance said a negotiated settlement between Russia and Ukraine was unlikely to satisfy either side, and that any peace deal will likely leave both Moscow and Kyiv “unhappy.”
He said the U.S. is aiming for a settlement both countries can accept.
“It’s not going to make anybody super happy. Both the Russians and the Ukrainians, probably, at the end of the day, are going to be unhappy with it,” he said on Fox News’ Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo.
U.S. President Donald Trump said on Friday he will meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin on August 15 in Alaska to negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine.
Trump said Russia and Ukraine were close to a ceasefire deal that could end the three-and-a-half-year-old conflict, possibly requiring Ukraine to surrender significant territory.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, however, said on Saturday that Ukraine cannot violate its constitution on territorial issues, adding, “Ukrainians will not gift their land to the occupiers.”
In the Fox News interview recorded on Friday, Vance said the United States was working to schedule talks between Putin, Zelenskiy and Trump, but he did not think it would be productive for Putin to meet with Zelenskiy before speaking with Trump.
“We’re at a point now where we’re trying to figure out, frankly, scheduling and things like that, around when these three leaders could sit down and discuss an end to this conflict,” he said.
A White House official said late on Saturday that Trump was open to a summit with both leaders, but that right now the White House was planning for the bilateral meeting requested by Putin.
(Reporting by Nandita Bose in WashingtonEditing by Deepa Babington and Matthew Lewis)
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