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.
“Any concessions you make to him will come back to bite you. They will,” Nate Vance insists.
Why has JD taken such a strong anti-Zelensky view?
“There was a campaign promise made to end the war quickly and when those two [Trump and Vance] are looking at ‘who can we bully into stopping’ they see that Ukraine is in a position of weakness. It was a simple calculation on their part that ‘we can’t really push Putin around necessarily so we’ll push Zelensky around,’” the vice president’s cousin says.
Nate Vance served as a Marine, then went onto oil and gas consulting in Texas. Growing up he spent summers with his cousin JD.
Trump and JD Vance are driving forward with plans to negotiate a ceasefire quickly in Ukraine with Russia. They have made it clear that any longer term peace will not be underwritten by American military guarantees for Ukraine’s safety. European leaders, and Kyiv, are convinced that a ceasefire would be an opportunity for Putin to rearm and attack again.
Nate Vance is amazed that his cousin does not appear to understand that “Zelensky can’t take his foot off the pedal. If he does then Russia will advance – that’s why he is asking for security guarantees from the US, in return for mineral concessions in Ukraine.
“For the US the only leverage was its support for Ukraine, but the current administration has said they will stop all support no matter what happens – so Russia doesn’t care what the US thinks.”
Nate Vance spent many months fighting in reconnaissance units and then went on to join assault teams, serving in the 67th and then the 59th Ukrainian infantry brigades.
He says he learned that Russian soldiers were being driven to fight by superiors who would kill them if they did not. This was proof, he says, that the Russians could not be trusted.
He scorns JD Vance and Trump’s claims that they can deliver a binding peace in talks with Putin without the threat of military power to hold back Russia’s ambition to reclaim the Eastern European countries lost to Moscow after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
He describes how in a battle near Chasiv Yar, close to Bakhmut which his drone team were monitoring, a Russian unit of about a dozen men attacked nearby Ukrainian forces.
Most of the Russians were killed or wounded but three made it back. Vance says he watched from drones sending live images to his group who were mostly Ukrainians.
“So the Russians go back to their friendly positions and NCOs (Russian non-committed officers) step out of the tree line and kill those guys”.
“They will eat their own. If you don’t think they will eat you… these guys, they have no qualms in betraying their own people. So betraying a foreign government is nothing. Especially a foreign government [like the US] who has effectively removed themselves and removed all levers from the conversation.”
He says that his fellow Americans who had volunteered to defend Ukraine, like him, all feel betrayed by the Trump White House. By his own family.
