JD Vance’s Republican Cousin Who Fought In Ukraine Slams VP’s Love For Russia

On Mar 12, 2025

Nate Vance slammed his cousin JD Vance on Monday over the vice president leaning into pro-Russia talking points during an Oval Office clash with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

“These people, as a policy, will eat their own, so they will not hesitate to eat an American president or an American vice president,” Nate Vance said in an interview with CNN’s Erin Burnett. Vance volunteered to fight with Ukraine’s Da Vinci Wolves Battalion following Russia’s 2022 invasion of the country,

“They don’t care what we think. They’re not our allies and they never will be — not, at least, for a generation,” he added.

Vance, a Texas native who served four years in the U.S. Marine Corps, vacationed with his future VP cousin as a kid and recently described himself to the BBC as “pretty Republican.”

He told Burnett that he “personally witnessed” Russia shooting its country’s troops “on enough occasions that it wasn’t just an isolated incident.”

The comments come just days after Vance, in an interview with French newspaper Le Figaro, referred to the fiery Oval Office meeting his cousin and President Donald Trump had with Zelenskyy as an “ambush of absolute bad faith” and slammed the administration for being Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “useful idiots.”

Since the contentious White House meeting that saw the vice president demanding gratitude from Zelenskyy for America’s support of his country, Trump has paused U.S. intelligence sharing and military aid to Ukraine.

Vance told Burnett that his cousin’s move “surprised” him and noted that there’s a “certain level of decorum that should be reached” in such a meeting.

“I’m not naive enough to think that, you know, national leaders don’t debate behind closed doors but when you do that and you publicly ridicule someone in public, they have to almost defend themselves,” he said.

“So it was just really disappointing to see it for me,” he added. “I disagreed with that tact.”