RUSSIA has abandoned its ambitions to control Ukraine after the war, according to JD Vance – who counts it as a key concession win.
The US Vice-President remains confident Trump will broker an end the fighting, as it emerges America has been blocking Ukraine from firing long-range missiles into Russia.
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Vance told NBC: “We believe we’ve already seen some significant concessions from both sides, just in the last few weeks.”
He said Russia has conceded by recognising “that they’re not going to be able to install a puppet regime in Kyiv”.
“I think the Russians have made significant concessions to President Trump for the first time in three-and-a-half years of this conflict.
“They’ve actually been willing to be flexible on some of their core demands.
“They’ve talked about what would be necessary to end the war.”
Vance insisted the diplomacy is working – and that the Americans are going about it in the right way.
He also rejected the suggestion that Putin is stringing Trump along.
Vance said: “We’re going to eventually be successful, or we’ll hit a brick wall.
“And if we hit a brick wall, then we’re going to continue this process of negotiation, of applying leverage.
“This is the energetic diplomacy that’s going to bring this war to a close.”
The Vice-President was also quizzed on how the government planned on forcing Russia top the table, if it isn’t through new sanctions.
Vance insisted Trump has applied “aggressive economic leverage” such as “secondary tariffs on India, to try to make it harder for the Russians to get rich from their oil economy”.
Not only has America withheld sanctions, it’s also been preventing Ukraine from shooting long-range missiles into Russia for months, according to US officials.
The Pentagon introduced a review mechanism in late spring that is effectively preventing Kyiv from striking targets in Russian territory, sources told the Wall Street Journal.
This has stopped Kyiv benefitting from the full firepower of US Atacms and British Storm Shadows.
President Biden gave the greenlight for Ukraine to use the Atacms back in November, Storm Shadows were fired into Russia for the first time that same month.
Two US officials told the paper that a Ukrainian request to use Atacms had already been rejected on at least one occasion.
Trump, meanwhile, has restated the two-week timeframe for reaching a deal.
He said on Friday: “I think over the next two weeks, we’re going to find out which way it’s going to go.
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Since the Alaska summit between Trump and Putin, a massive Russian blitz in Ukraine seriously damaged an American factory.
Drones and missiles rained down on the electronics factory in western Ukraine on Thursday night – which President Zelensky insisted was deliberate.
Vance said he “doesn’t like” and Trump said he is “not happy” – but the attack doesn’t appear to have derailed US commitment to negotiating.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian forces claim to have killed three Russian perpetrators of the Bucha massacre in a slew of revenge bombings on the country’s Independence Day on Saturday.
Ukraine’s military intelligence unit GUR said three Russian soldiers dubbed “Butchers of Bucha” were wiped out in surgical bombings in the Russian-occupied Luhansk region.
They were targeted in the Luhansk region while operating as a mobile air defence group to cover a Russian military-repair base.
Bucha is a town close to Kyiv where Russian troops were accused of perpetrating appalling war crimes as they sought to storm Kyiv in 2022.
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