Vice President JD Vance explained Thursday that President Trump is aiming for the US to have “productive negotiation” with both Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelensky to end the nearly three-year war in Ukraine.

“He will go into [peace talks] saying ‘The Overton Window is wide open. I want the killing to stop. I want Ukraine to be a sovereign country, and everything else is going to be on the table,’” Vance told the Wall Street Journal. 

When asked about what “stick” the US would use to compel Putin to negotiate in good faith and abide by the terms of a potential peace deal, Vance indicated that the US has a broad range of options – from sanctions to “military tools.” 

“I think certainly, look, there, there are instruments of pressure, absolutely,” the vice president said. “And again, if you look at President Trump’s approach to this, he — the range of options is extremely broad. And there are economic tools of leverage, there are, of course, military tools of leverage. There’s a whole host of things that we could do.” 

“But fundamentally, I think, the president wants to have a productive negotiation, both with Putin and with Zelensky”

Vance’s remarks came one day before a critical meeting between Zelensky and a US delegation — which included the vice president, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and special envoy Keith Kellogg — at the Munich Security Conference in Germany. 

The meeting was expected to center on how to end the war started by Russia. 

“The president is not going to go in this with blinders on,” Vance said of Trump’s desire to broker a deal between Kyiv and Moscow. “He’s going to say, ‘Everything is on the table, let’s make a deal.’”

Vance insisted that Ukraine maintaining its independence would be required in any deal with Putin, and suggested that there would be a security guarantee for Ukraine but refused to “pre-commit” to what that would entail, explaining that negotiations could shake out in any number of ways. 

“Well, look, we understand Ukraine is going to have to have some security guarantees,” Vance said. “That’s part of Ukraine being a long-term sovereign state. But what those security guarantees ultimately look like, I think it’s way too early to make predictions or to make promise.” 

“There are any number of formulations of configurations, but we do care about Ukraine having sovereign independence,” he added. “They fought very bravely, and that’s going to be something that figures very prominently in the negotiations.”

Vance signaled that Trump could decide to put things on the table or take them off depending on how the negotiations go. 

“President Trump could say, look, we don’t want this thing, we might not like this thing, but we’re willing to put it back on the table if the Russians aren’t being good negotiating partners, or there are things that are very important to Ukrainians that we might want to take off the table,” the vice president said.

On Friday, Vance denied that he had suggested at any point during the Wall Street Journal interview that US troops could be sent into Ukraine. 

“President Trump is the ultimate deal maker and will bring peace to the region by ending the war in Ukraine. As we’ve always said, American troops should never be put into harm’s way where it doesn’t advance American interests and security. This war is between Russia and Ukraine,” he wrote on X.

“The fact that the WSJ twisted my words in the way they did for this story is absurd, but not surprising considering they have spent years pushing for more American sons and daughters in uniform to be unnecessarily deployed overseas,” he added. 

The outlet published a story featuring some of Vance’s comments several hours before it released the full transcript of the interview.