"We are Vladimir Putin's useful idiots": Le Figaro found Nate, JD Vance's first cousin and volunteer fighter in Ukraine
EXCLUSIVE - The Texan spent three years in Ukraine, including two and a half years fighting on the bloodiest fronts. He despairs of his cousin's and Donald Trump's position.
When Nate heard his cousin JD Vance attacking Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office of the White House, he was furious. In his camper van, lost on the roads of the American West that he has been traveling since his return from Ukraine in January 2025, Nate was disappointed. Disappointed in this cousin, a few years his junior - Nate is 47 - whose integrity he has never stopped defending. "JD is a good guy, intelligent," he explains. "When he criticized aid to Ukraine, I told myself it was because he had to appeal to a certain electorate, that it was the game of politics. But what they did to Zelensky (with Donald Trump, Ed.), was an ambush of absolute bad faith," he fumes.
Nate and JD share grandparents: Beverly, JD's mother, is the sister of Nate's father, James. The two men spent vacations together, in Middletown, in JD's family or in California, where Nate's family briefly lived. JD Vance's career took off in 2016 when he published Hillbilly Elegy, which recounts his chaotic childhood as a "little White" from Appalachia. In 2023, he was elected senator for Ohio. The following year, in 2024, he became the 50th Vice President of the United States alongside Donald Trump. During this time, Nate chose to embark for Ukraine and its muddy trenches to fight the Russians.
"Being from your family doesn't mean I'm going to accept watching you get my comrades killed," fumes Nate Vance. Methodically, the soldier responds to his cousin's arguments, highlighting the benefits the United States has derived from its involvement in the war, the good use of American equipment on the front... "I was disappointed. When JD justifies his mistrust of Zelensky by the 'reports' he's seen, I almost choked," he says indignantly. "His own cousin was on the front line. I could have told him the truth, without pretense, without personal interest. He never sought to know more," he sighs. Yet Nate tried several times to contact his cousin. "From Ukraine, reaching a senator is not simple," he admits. "But I left messages at his office. I never heard back," the soldier laments.
Nate Vance's service record tells the story of the conflict. The Texan participated in the deadliest battles of the war: Kupiansk, Bakhmut, Avdiivka, Pokrovsk... In the few photos that trace these three years spent in Ukraine, Nate displays the discreet assurance of the professional soldier. The colossus whose gray beard eats up his cheeks blends into the mass of his Ukrainian comrades. He chose, however, to hang up his weapons in early January, a few days before his cousin's inauguration as vice president. Until then, Nate had always been discreet about his relationship with Donald Trump's running mate. "It had become complicated to stay. I couldn't take the risk of being captured," he says simply.
Nothing really predisposed Nate Vance to join a battalion of Ukrainian volunteers to fight the Russian army. Nate did spend four years in the army, with the Marines, but that was twenty years ago, between the ages of 18 and 22. From 2001 to 2022, he led the peaceful life of an average American from San Antonio, Texas. For years, he patiently climbed the ladder of an oil company. His footprint on social media shows a man with well-established Republican convictions, practicing hunting and sport shooting.
When the war broke out in 2022, Nate quickly understood that this conflict was different from others. "I wanted to go see. Out of curiosity. And for the adventure too. It's not very admissible, but it's the truth," he confides. In March 2022, three weeks after the start of the invasion, Nate went to Lviv, in western Ukraine, which had become, during the first months of the war, the nerve center of international humanitarian assistance. "I wanted to help in one way or another, in logistics or medical support. I could see that history was being written before me, I wanted to be part of it," he continues.
One morning, in a hotel, the former Marine met a British volunteer, in search of foreigners with military experience. The Ukrainian army was then integrating thousands of new fighters every week, who needed to be trained before being sent to the front. "They were looking for anyone who had ever held a weapon in their hands. It was the most basic training," Nate recalls. Under his authority paraded workers, bartenders, teachers... For just one week. "Many were so young. Almost children. It was terrifying," the former soldier remembers. So, when a group of particularly motivated young volunteers offered to take him to the front, Nate accepted. He returned to the United States for a few weeks, to come back in June 2022. This time, he headed for the Donbass, in eastern Ukraine, where fighting was raging.
"He was much older than us. Much older than the other foreign volunteers even," recalls Dima, who fought with him in the battalion, nicknamed the "Da Vinci Wolves," after the unit's founder. "On the first day, we went to the shooting range. He took a simple Kalashnikov, without a sight, and set up 800 meters from the target. Everyone mocked him. When he hit the metal target five times in a row, the laughter stopped," he laughs. In the evening, the unit's officers gathered to plan upcoming operations. "A lieutenant was listing our equipment needs. The commander interrupted him: 'I only need Nate and his Kalashnikov.' That's how Nate joined the group," adds another of his comrades.
Nate joined Honor, a group of Ukrainian nationalists, already on the front line in 2014 during the Maidan revolution. "Some were just children. But they had a rage, a strength," he confides. Over the weeks, Nate learned to navigate among these new comrades, who had all volunteered to join the front. "There were lawyers, professors, engineers... They left everything to defend their homeland," he says softly.
Despite the language barrier, Nate contributed to the professionalization of this volunteer unit, not even yet formally integrated into the regular army. "It was more of a militia than a unit. A group of citizens who organize and equip themselves to defend their country," describes the Texan. "And the real difference between a militia and a professional unit is the effectiveness of communication. So that's what we worked on," he adds. In the unit, few soldiers spoke English, and the beginnings were difficult, until he met "Alf," a bodybuilding nuclear engineer, a family man, fluent in English. "He became my Ukrainian chaperon," he jokes.
"Nate is an excellent fighter, with remarkable composure," recalls Serhii Filimonov, the battalion's current commander. In his command center near Pokrovsk, where his unit holds the southern flank of the city, the imposing young man, aged 30, tries to count the times he thought he would die alongside Nate Vance. "Fifteen times we should have died. Fifteen times, we survived," he smiles. Serhii evokes that trench in the Bakhmut region, in which the two men found themselves trapped in 2023 for hours under the methodical pounding of Russian artillery. "That time, we said goodbye to each other," he recalls.
Withdrawn from the battlefield, Nate is now looking for a publisher to publish his war memoirs. "I hope to continue to defend Ukraine in other ways, it really needs it," he says, modestly. A lifelong Republican, he now faces incomprehension from people with whom he has always agreed. Even in his own family. On Facebook, his mother, Donna, adopts JD Vance's vehemence toward Volodymyr Zelensky, going so far as to call him a "pretentious little shit." From the arid roads of the American West that he now travels, Nate despairs of the latest developments in the conflict and the American reversal. "Donald Trump and my cousin clearly believe they can pacify Vladimir Putin. They are wrong. The Russians are not about to forget our support for Ukraine. We are Vladimir Putin's useful idiots," he deplores.