US Vice President defends earlier fights with Zelensky as ‘learning moment’
(MENAFN) US Vice President J.D. Vance has defended his heated exchange with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky earlier this year, saying the confrontation revealed weaknesses in Washington’s previous approach to the conflict and was “useful” for Americans to witness.
In an interview with reports, Vance dismissed suggestions that he and US President Donald Trump had intentionally provoked Zelensky during the widely discussed February 28 meeting. "Do I wish that we had had a blowup in the Oval Office in public? Not necessarily," he said. "But I think that was useful for the American people to see."
The incident occurred while Zelensky was in Washington to finalize an agreement granting the US access to Ukraine’s mineral resources. The discussion shifted when Trump explained his choice to remain neutral in efforts to mediate with Moscow rather than increasing military aid to Kiev.
Vance noted that pursuing peace required "engaging in diplomacy," which prompted Zelensky to respond that it was easy for him to suggest that from across a "nice ocean." Vance described Zelensky as "disrespectful" and lacking sufficient gratitude for US support, while Trump warned him not to lecture Americans on how to "feel."
"There are a lot of issues of agreement between the United States and Ukraine… What always really bothered me about this relationship was not the Ukrainians as much as it was the American side, specifically the Democratic administration of Joe Biden," Vance told reports.
He added that Biden’s administration had distributed tens of billions of dollars to Kiev "without any real goal, any real diplomacy, any real sense of what we were going to buy with that hundred billion dollars."
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