Nate Vance reportedly spent three years fighting to defend Ukraine from Russia’s invasion

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2025/03/09/vance-trump-putin-useful-idiots

JD Vance, right, publicly attacked Volodymyr Zelensky in their Oval Office meeting last month Credit: Saul Loeb/Getty

JD Vance and Donald Trump are “Vladimir Putin’s useful idiots”, the vice-president’s cousin has claimed, after the US suspended military aid to Ukraine.

Nate Vance, who reportedly spent three years fighting to defend Ukraine from Russia’s invasion, accused Mr Vance of “ambushing” Volodymyr Zelensky in an explosive Oval Office encounter with the Ukrainian leader last month.

“Donald Trump and my cousin clearly believe they can placate Vladimir Putin. They are wrong. The Russians are not about to forget our support for Ukraine,” Nate Vance, who returned to the US in January, told Le Figaro.

“We are Vladimir Putin’s useful idiots,” he added.

Nate Vance travelled to Ukraine three weeks after Russia’s invasion in February 2022, and has since reportedly fought in some of the war’s bloodiest battles as part of the “Da Vinci Wolves” battalion.

By contrast, his cousin has been a longstanding critic of Kyiv, and said shortly before the invasion: “I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine.”

He publicly attacked Mr Zelensky in their Oval Office meeting last month for being “disrespectful” and ungrateful for US military aid shipments.

‘Game of politics’

“Have you said thank you once?” Mr Vance asked the Ukrainian leader, accusing him of “litigating in front of the American media”.

Nate Vance criticised his cousin’s reception of Mr Zelensky, saying the Yale Law School graduate was a “good guy, intelligent” but was playing politics with Ukraine’s future.

“When he criticised aid to Ukraine, I told myself that it was because he had to please a certain electorate, that it was the game of politics,” he told Le Figaro.

“But what they did to Zelensky was an ambush of absolute bad faith.”

He argued that Ukraine had put US donations of military equipment – which Mr Trump suspended on Monday as he piled pressure on Kyiv to reach a peace deal with Moscow – to good use on the front lines.

“I was disappointed. When JD justifies his distrust of Zelensky by the ‘reports’ he has seen, I thought I was going to choke,” Nate Vance said.

“His own cousin was on the front lines. I could have told him the truth, without pretence, without personal interest. He never tried to find out more.”

He added that he had left messages with his cousin’s office but never heard back.

Nate Vance said he left Ukraine in January, shortly before his cousin became vice-president, because “it had become complicated to stay – I couldn’t take the risk of being captured”.