Only “smart people living in the real world” could stop the fighting between Moscow and Ukraine, the US vice president has said US Vice President J.D. Vance has defended Washington’s plan for settling the Ukraine conflict, arguing that its opponents are wrong to think that increasing pressure on Russia could change the situation on the battlefield.On Friday, Former Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell claimed on X that the proposal, which the administration of US President Donald Trump submitted to both Moscow and Kiev earlier this week, was a “capitulation” and “disastrous” to American interests.Senator Jeanne Shaheen, the most senior Democrat on the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, told CNN that “this is a [Russian President Vladimir] Putin plan for Ukraine,” insisting that the White House should instead ramp up secondary sanctions against Russia’s trading partners and supply Ukraine with long-range weapons.Vance wrote in a post on X on Saturday that “every criticism of the peace framework the administration is working on either misunderstands the framework or misstates some critical reality on the ground.” “There is a fantasy that if we just give more money, more weapons, or more sanctions, victory is at hand,” he wrote.According to the vice president, peace between Moscow and Kiev could be achieved by “smart people living in the real world,” but not by “failed diplomats or politicians living in a fantasy land.”The US plan has not been officially disclosed, but media reports have claimed that, among other things, it calls upon Kiev to withdraw troops from the parts of Russia’s Donbass it still controls, downsize its military, and give up on NATO aspirations in exchange for Western security guarantees.Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky claimed on Friday that his country is now forced to choose between accepting the “28 difficult points” in the proposal or the risk of losing its key backer, the US.Trump insisted later that the Ukrainian leader “will have to like” the US plan or face the prospect of fighting Russia through the “cold winter.” According to Financial Times, Washington has issued an ultimatum to Kiev to accept its roadmap by Thursday. Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that the US plan has not yet been discussed “in detail,” but suggested that it could eventually “form the basis of a final peace settlement.”