Yuri Josef Koszarycz. Senior Lecturer in Theological Ethics at Australian Catholic University (ACU), Canberra.

Feb 20, 2025

US token executive James Vance, ever eager to impress his political master, has warned Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to stop criticising Donald Trump. This is hardly surprising coming from a man who once despised Trump but performed a breathtaking 360 degree turn to brown nose his way into the inner circle of the aging and increasingly incoherent White House Don. Vance, who just days ago was twisting his beard while lecturing Europe about free speech, is now whining that Zelenskyy should stay silent, apparently forgetting that truth telling is not slander.

The dispute began when Zelenskyy dared to state the obvious: Trump lives in a Russian disinformation bubble. Trump claimed Zelenskyy’s approval rating had plummeted to four percent. The source? The Kremlin’s finest fiction writers. Russian propagandists seemingly plucked the figure straight from their backsides or presumably yanked it from the same place they find their “military victories”.

Trump, never one to fact check when a lie serves his agenda, gleefully repeated it. In reality, polling shows Zelenskyy enjoys the trust of nearly sixty percent of Ukrainians. Meanwhile, Trump still cannot accept that he lost his second last election by millions of votes.

Trump also threw out another fantasy, claiming the US has sent Ukraine three hundred and fifty billion dollars in aid. A number as real as his claims of election fraud. The actual figure is hovers around one hundred fifteen billion over four years (2022, 2023, 2024, 2025), a significant amount, but nowhere near Trump’s mythical sum. Not that facts ever mattered to the man who suggested nuking hurricanes and drinking bleach.

It is also ironic that a man who tried to overturn the US Constitution now calls Zelenskyy a dictator, but logic has never been Trump’s strong suit.

Vance’s newfound sensitivity over public statements is particularly hilarious given his recent tirades against European restrictions on free speech. Now he demands Zelenskyy keep quiet when countering outright lies from the US president.

The irony is richer than a Russian oligarch’s London penthouse. America ranks a humiliating fifty first in global freedom of speech indices, far below the European countries Vance so loves to criticise, while Europe dominates the top ten. The Trump administration, which Vance serves so loyally, even revoked White House press credentials from Associated Press for the unforgivable crime of calling the Gulf of Mexico by its actual name rather than the fictional Gulf of America.

Vance’s devotion to Trump is pathetic. Once an outspoken critic, now a dutiful lackey, he has mastered the fine art of spinelessness with the enthusiasm of a Kremlin propagandist editing battlefield maps. Perhaps he genuinely does not understand independent thought, having long since sacrificed his own in exchange for a ticket to the big leagues of sycophancy.

It is the natural career progression for those in Trump’s orbit, reduced to parroting whatever nonsense his boss spits out.