"We Are Putin's Useful Idiots" (cousin of J.D. Vance)

Nate Vance is the cousin of American Vice President J.D. Vance and also a volunteer fighter in Ukraine. His view of the conflict is diametrically opposed to that of his more famous cousin.

"Being family doesn't mean I accept you killing my comrades," he says sharply in a response in Le Figaro. Make no mistake: Nate and JD may share the same grandparents, but their outlook on US foreign policy differs night and day.

Both are Republicans, but Nate Vance served in the US military for several years, then worked his way up in a Texas oil company for nearly twenty years. But when the Russian invasion of Ukraine began, he changed his life.

To the Front

In early 2022, when Russia invaded Ukraine, Nate went to Ukraine. "I wanted to go and see," he says in an interview with French newspaper Le Figaro. "Out of curiosity. For the adventure." Three weeks after the invasion, he went to the Ukrainian city of Lviv. "I wanted to help in some way. I saw that history was being written before my eyes. I wanted to be part of it."

'Ambush for Zelensky in the Oval Office'

And so he did. Over the past three years, the 47-year-old Nate spent most of his time at the Ukrainian front. He volunteered in the deadliest battles of the war: Kupiansk, Bakhmut, Avdiivka, Pokrovsk, ... What he saw and experienced there cannot be reconciled with what his cousin publicly proclaims. "J.D. is a good, intelligent man," Nate says in Le Figaro. "When he criticised the aid to Ukraine, I still thought he had to satisfy a certain electorate. That it was a political game. But what they recently did to (Ukrainian President Volodymyr, ed.) Zelensky in the Oval Office was an ambush of absolute bad faith."

Meanwhile, Nate has left the front again and returned home to the US. He now wants to pour his war experiences into a book. And moreover, he wants to continue helping Ukraine. "That is really needed," he says. "Trump and my cousin truly believe they can appease (Russian President, ed.) Vladimir Putin. They are wrong. The Russians will never forget the American support for Ukraine either. We are Putin's useful idiots."

(SR/Source: Le Figaro/Illustration image: ©The White House, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)