US Vice President JD Vance in an Apr. 8 public discussion at the Mathias Corvinus Collegium (MCC) spoke on several subjects, among them the Russo-Ukrainian War, White House efforts to bring peace, and his view of Budapest’s role in that process. Almost all of what he said was misleading and factually inaccurate.
Specifically, Vance comments regarding Ukraine, Russia and Hungary in the context of the Russo-Ukrainian War were:
Vance: “Uh we have made significant progress…over time, their positions have gotten closer and closer together.”
In fact, progress has been close to nil and movement between the sides has been negligible, and by Russia not at all.
How much land is at stake in the Russo-Ukrainian War
Vance: “We’re talking about bargaining over a few square kilometers of territory one way or the other.”
In fact, the land space involved is very substantial and by most definitions massive.
Value of what is at stake in the Russo-Ukrainian War
Vance: “ Is that worth the loss of hundreds of thousands of additional Russian and Ukrainian young men?”
In fact, with the qualification that it is impossible to assign a real monetary value on a human life, Vance’s messaging that little of value is at stake in the Russo-Ukrainian War is obviously and by many measures spectacularly wrong.
The best-known Vance comment on Ukraine dates back to Feb. 19 2022, five days before Russia invaded Ukraine a second time and started a war that has now killed more than a million people, in which Vance told US Republican pundit Steve Bannon:
“I gotta be honest with you, I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine one way or another.”
Russian drone and artillery strikes killed at least three civilians and wounded several others across the Kherson and Dnipropetrovsk regions on Saturday morning, April 11, local officials reported.
In the Kherson region, a 73-year-old woman was killed in the village of Fedorivka when a “Molniya” type drone struck the settlement around 9:30 a.m. Earlier that morning, the body of a 50-year-old man was discovered in Kherson’s Korabelny district, a victim of overnight shelling.
The morning also saw targeted attacks on civilian transport in Kherson. A 24-year-old nurse was hospitalized with a concussion and blast injuries after a drone hit a public bus at 7:20 a.m. Shortly after, a 61-year-old man was wounded when another drone targeted his car.
The escalation in strikes on Saturday morning followed a massive overnight drone offensive that killed two people in Odesa and wounded 17 in Sumy. In total, the Ukrainian Air Force reported 160 drones launched across the country overnight.
These attacks occurred in the final hours before a unilateral ceasefire, decreed by Russian President Vladimir Putin for the Orthodox Easter holiday, was set to begin at 4 p.m. on Saturday. The persistent bombardment of residential areas and public transport has fueled deep skepticism in Kyiv, where President Zelensky’s earlier proposals for a holiday truce were dismissed by the Kremlin.
And on the war front, Russia launched over a hundre drones overnight just hours after its Easter ceasefire announcement, while the Ukrainian military took out an S-300V System on the southern Zaporizhzhia front and expanded the recent oil strikes to the Casian Sea..
There is also positive news on the sanctions front, as Zelensky’s envoy said Dutch parts are no longer being found in Russian Shahed drones, though he cautioned that fresh chips, including US ones, are still showing up in new drones.
