Vance Slaps Down Hegseth by Threatening Putin With U.S. Troops

Vice President JD Vance issued a stark warning to Russia, threatening the potential deployment of U.S. troops to Ukraine—a move that directly undercut Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth who was forced into an embarrassing reversal on his earlier remarks.

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Vance said the U.S. may take military action if Russian President Vladimir Putin fails to negotiate a deal that guarantees Ukraine’s long-term independence.

“There are economic tools of leverage, there are of course military tools of leverage” Washington could use to pressure Putin, the vice president told the newspaper.

“There are any number of formulations, of configurations, but we do care about Ukraine having sovereign independence,” he said.

Hegseth had firmly ruled out any U.S. troop involvement in Ukraine, but was left scrambling to walk back his first statement on the world stage after a powerful backlash.

Criticism must have also come from inside the administration because the next time he was in front of the cameras he had radically changed his tune. “Any security guarantee must be backed by capable European and non-European troops,” he said.

“Everything is on the table in any future peace talks between Ukraine and Russia, including Ukraine’s aspirations to join NATO,” the defense secretary said Thursday in a major shift in tone. He added that negotiations were being led by President Donald Trump.

“What he decides to allow or not allow is at the purview of the leader of the free world, of President Trump. So I’m not going to stand at this podium and declare what President Trump will do or won’t do,” he said.

Trump announced that he had spoken. to Putin by phone on Wednesday morning, and said they agreed to work “very closely” with each other to kickstart peace negotiations “immediately.”

Economist Mark Toth, a national security and foreign policy analyst, told The Daily Beast that the contradictory messaging from Vance and Hegseth signals a deliberate White House strategy to keep adversaries—and allies—off balance.

“The White House appears determined to be unpredictable, using the ‘fog of war’—or in this case, the ‘fog of negotiations’—to maintain leverage as they work toward their endgame in Europe,” Toth said. “Ultimately, this approach sets the stage for a strategic pivot to pressing national security threats emerging from the Indo-Pacific and Iran.”

However, he warned that such tactics come with significant risks. “One final word of caution—fog, especially self-created fog on the battlefield, always risks its creator becoming lost in it as well. Trump and his national security team would be wise to remember that.”

The contradictory messaging from the White House may also be part of the strategy to pressure NATO member states into raising their defense spending from 2 percent to 5 percent of their GDP, Toth said.

“This mixed messaging by senior White House officials was likely intentional in design,” he said. “What better way to do that than scaring Brussels that under a Trump Administration going forward that Europe is going to increasingly be more on its own when it comes to confronting Putin’s ambitions in Eastern Europe?”

As talks of potential negotiations between Kyiv and Moscow to end the war gained momentum, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky accused Russia of striking the Chernobyl nuclear power plant with an “attack drone with a high-explosive warhead” early Friday.

The strike caused major damage to the radiation shelter and caused a fire, Zelensky said. The blaze was later extinguished.

Nuclear watchdog the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said on X that radiation levels remain stable and that no casualties were reported.

The Kremlin swiftly denied responsibility, accusing Ukraine of staging a false-flag attack—a tactic Moscow has often employed to erode Western support for Kyiv.

“Most likely, we are talking about yet another provocation, manipulation—this is exactly what the Kyiv regime loves and sometimes does not hesitate to do," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Friday.

Vance is scheduled to meet Zelensky later on Friday at the Munich Security Conference, where talks on the Russia-Ukraine war and potential negotiations are expected to take center stage.