Vice President J.D. Vance met with U.S. airmen at the Royal Air Force Base Fairford on Wednesday ahead of President Donald Trump’s highly anticipated meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Anchorage, Alaska, on Friday.
According to Fox News, Vance visited the Royal Air Force Base Fairford, which houses the U.S. Air Force’s 501st Combat Support Wing and the 99th Expeditionary Reconnaissance Squadron, after holding multiple meetings with America’s allies in Europe. Fox News reported that a U.S. official confirmed that the vice president met with U.K. Foreign Secretary David Lammy and that the meeting resulted in “significant progress” regarding a potential end to the war in Ukraine.
Addressing U.S. Airmen in the United Kingdom on Wednesday, Vance said, “The president of the United States came in six months ago, and I just talked to him right before I came on the stage, and he said very simply that we are going to make it our mission as an administration to bring peace to Europe once again.”
The vice president claimed that it is “impossible” to achieve peace anywhere in the world unless “the bad guys are also worried that we’ve got a hell of a fine Air Force and a hell of a fine military to back up the peace to begin with.”
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“So what you guys do, even though you may not see it every single day, is you make it possible. You make it possible for us to accomplish the president’s goals through negotiation,” Vance added. “You make it possible for us to go into a room and say, yes, we want peace. Yes, we want to work together. Yes, we’d like to bring an end to this terrible conflict, but we’ve also got some great airmen back at Fairford and other bases. They’re going to make sure that no matter what happens, the peace and the prosperity and the goals of the American people are going to be well served by what you do.”
The vice president told the U.S. airmen at Fairford that the president is planning to try to bring an end to the war between Russia and Ukraine during his meeting with Putin on Friday in Anchorage, Alaska.
“You guys make that possible,” Vance said. “You guys are the reason why we can go into a negotiation with strength. You guys are the reason why we have leverage in these conversations with world leaders, because they know that if we cut a deal, it is backed up by the finest fighting force anywhere in the world.”
In a video on X, formerly Twitter, the vice president can be seen greeting multiple airmen at the Fairford base on Wednesday.
