In early February 2022, when he was no more than a modest candidate in the Republican Senate primary, JD Vance told a television interviewer: “I got to be honest with you, I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine one way or the other.” I had enjoyed his book Hillbilly Elegy, published a few years earlier, and until that point had been intrigued by his political ambitions. That sentence, however, immediately put me off. It was one thing to disagree on how to react to Vladimir Putin’s threats and stratagems, but someone who would publicly say he did not care about one of the major foreign policy issues of our time was surely disqualifying himself from any serious debate. Or any serious career in national politics.
A week or so after that interview, Russia invaded Ukraine. For a moment, I believed Vance’s crass comments would cost him the election. I was wrong. He went on to win the primary and the Ohio Senate election that November. On 15 July 2024 he was picked to be Donald Trump’s vice-presidential candidate. Given Trump’s age, Vance could very well become president over the next four years or at the next election in 2028, even if others will inevitably fight for Trump’s succession mantle. During Vance’s astonishing rise he has continued to show the same disregard for Ukraine’s fate that he so proudly exhibited in that 2022 interview.
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