In the mafia-like world of the White House where loyalty tests are routine and macho threats the norm, JD Vance might have hoped for omertà from his actual family. Instead, both the vice president and the president himself find themselves described by one of JD’s close relatives as “useful idiots” serving Vladimir Putin.
But this is not just a family member who backs the Democrats. This is his first cousin who has spent much of the last two years fighting, and killing, Russians in Ukraine for what he thought were the ideals America stands for.
In an interview with The Independent, he accuses Vance and Trump of going after Zelensky in the ongoing precarious peace talks because they realise they can’t bully Putin.
Nate Vance, a former US Marine, flew to Poland, took a train to Lviv, and volunteered to help defend Ukraine less than a month after Putin’s full scale invasion of 2022.
The 45-year-old started out training Ukrainians who had rushed to the defence of Kyiv, but soon found himself invited to join the “Da Vinci Wolves” group of volunteers that were absorbed into the Ukrainian army.
Before long he was in combat in many of Ukraine’s bloodiest theatres, Bakhmut, Kuppyansk, Aadivka, Vuhledar. “We were bouncing around all over the place” in the forefront of what he believes is a defence of democracy and of his homeland.
“There were some days we went out and casualty rates were 50 per cent,” says Nate Vance, speaking from the Rocky Mountains where he is resting before returning to the fight in Ukraine.
While JD, 40, was on the campaign trail where he snubbed Ukraine’s president Volodymr Zelensky, and even after he was elected, “JD never asked me anything” about the war, his cousin recalls.
Nor has the vice president been in touch after the disastrous meeting with Zelensky in the Oval Office when the world witnessed a drastic shift against Kyiv by the US.
“I was angry, let’s be honest I was angry. Even if you removed my connection to the vice president and you removed my connection to Ukraine, and this was just some neutral issue where a president invited a foreign leader to the White House… it was a really weird thing to me.
“The perception is that that was pre-planned and to kind of put pressure on somebody seemed like an attempt to make Zelensky look small. What it looked like was an ambush.
“I think that Trump does not understand that region of the world as well as he likes to pretend he does. He almost views it as two adolescent boys roughhousing in the living room and he’s going to walk in like the Dad and say ‘Ok guys knock it off it’s time for dinner’.
“And they’going to be like ‘OK’ ad then go back to being friends again and that is nowhere near what is going to happen.
“They’re starting to look like Putin’s useful idiots. I’m sure Putin’s laughing his ass off behind closed doors at all these concessions that are being made, knowing he’s not going to do what the current administration wants him to do.
