Trump's vice president's cousin, JD Vance, has attacked the White House over its handling of Ukrainian President Zelensky. Nate Vance, a former U.S. Marine who fought on the front lines alongside Kiev against Moscow, condemns the reserved treatment of the Ukrainian president in the Oval Office and warns: "We are Vladimir Putin's useful idiots."
In a long article, Le Figaro tells the version of Nate Vance, originally from Texas, who was in Ukraine for three years, two and a half in the trenches, fighting with the "Da Vinci Wolves" battalion.
Three years fighting with Kiev
A former Marine, he is the son of James Vance, the sister of JD’s mother Beverly. The two often spent vacations together. Since returning to the U.S., he has traveled the West in a camper van, looking for a publisher willing to publish his war memoirs. In Ukraine, Nate participated in the battles of Kupyansk, Bakhmut, Avdiivka, and Pokrovsk, returning to the U.S. only in early January, shortly before JD’s inauguration as vice president. When he heard his cousin arguing with Zelensky in the Oval Office of the White House on February 28, he was furious.
"The ambush on Zelensky is unacceptable"
"He's actually a good, intelligent guy," he told Le Figaro. "When he criticized the aid to Ukraine, I thought it was because he had to please a certain electorate, that it was a political game. But what they did to Zelensky (Vance and Trump) was an ambush in absolute bad faith."
The war in Ukraine and the USA
He attacks his cousin: “The fact that I am part of your family does not mean that I will agree to watch you get killed by my friends.” He dismantles JD Vance’s entire strategy on this issue, emphasizing, among other things, the benefits that the US has derived from its involvement in the war.
"I could have told him the truth"
"I am disappointed. When JD justified his distrust of Zelensky through the 'reports' he saw (on TV), I thought I would drown," he stressed, quoted by the Parisian newspaper. He further explained: "Your cousin was on the front line. I could have told him the truth, without staging, without personal interests. He never tried to reveal more."
"Russians don't forget"
He then explains that he has tried several times to contact JD. “It’s not easy to contact a senator from Ukraine, but I left messages in his office. I never heard back.” In early January, after Trump’s victory, the decision to return was made. “The situation was getting complicated. I couldn’t risk getting caught,” he explains. A lifelong Republican, Nate says he cannot understand the reasons for the new US course. “Donald Trump and my cousin,” he warns, “seem to believe they can curry favor with Putin. They are wrong. The Russians do not forget our support for Ukraine. We are Vladimir Putin’s useful idiots.” (A2 Televizion)
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