Vance called the war in Ukraine one of the most difficult conflicts to resolve and criticized the position of European leaders

U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance said that Russia’s war against Ukraine remains one of the most difficult international conflicts to settle.

At the same time, he criticized European leaders, accusing them of insufficient involvement in the search for a real political solution, and singled out Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán as the most constructive participant in the negotiating process.

Speaking on April 8 in Budapest at the Mathias Corvinus Collegium, Vance said that Donald Trump’s administration had, in his words, made “significant progress” in mediation efforts to end the war. However, he acknowledged that expectations of a quick settlement had not been met.

“In some ways, we thought this would be the easiest, but in fact it has turned out to be the hardest,” Vance said.

According to him, the sides have at least managed to put their positions in writing, and those positions “are getting closer and closer to each other.”

Particular attention was drawn to his remarks about the scale of the remaining disagreements. Vance described the dispute between Moscow and Kyiv as a struggle over limited pieces of territory and questioned the price of prolonging the conflict.

“At this point, we are talking about haggling over a few square kilometers of territory one way or the other — is that worth hundreds of thousands of Russian and Ukrainian lives? Is it worth additional months or even years of high energy prices and economic ruin?” he said.

At the same time, Russia continues to claim territories in Donbas that it does not yet fully control. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, for his part, has consistently rejected scenarios involving territorial concessions, stressing that they contradict Ukraine’s Constitution.

Another round of U.S.-mediated talks that had been expected this month was postponed, once again underscoring the deadlocked nature of the diplomatic process.

Vance also separately praised Viktor Orbán, calling him the most useful European partner in discussions about a possible settlement. According to the U.S. vice president, it was Orbán who pushed Washington to look more deeply into what terms for ending the war might be acceptable to both Ukraine and Russia.

Against this backdrop, the rest of Europe’s leaders, in Vance’s view, look “disappointing,” because, as he put it, they seem “not particularly interested” in ending the conflict.

After Vance’s controversial remarks, Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry tried to reduce their political impact. Ministry spokesman Heorhii Tykhyi said the comments were made “in the context of an election campaign” and that Kyiv did not intend to attach too much significance to them. He also stressed separately that they did not represent the position of the U.S. president.

At the same time, the Ukrainian side again called on Washington to increase pressure on Moscow and use American influence to advance the idea of a ceasefire.

In addition, Vance intensified his personal dispute with Volodymyr Zelensky by calling the Ukrainian president’s recent remarks about Orbán “scandalous” and “unacceptable.”

The Kremlin, for its part, supported Vance’s criticism of European interference in Hungary’s internal affairs. Germany responded in kind: a spokesman for the German government said that Vance’s very visit to Budapest on the eve of the elections already says a great deal about who is actually trying to influence the political situation.