Vance says pro-Ukraine protestors confronted him while he was with his daughter

Vice President Vance said that he was confronted by a group of pro-Ukraine protestors while he was walking with his 3-year-old daughter on Saturday. 

Vance wrote that he encountered “Slava Ukraini” protesters who followed him around and were shouting as his daughter got “increasingly anxious and scared.” 

“I decided to speak with the protesters in the hopes that I could trade a few minutes of conversation for them leaving my toddler alone. (Nearly all of them agreed.),” Vance wrote in a Saturday post on X.  

Vance said that it was “mostly respectful conversation, but if you’re chasing a 3-year-old as part of a political protest, you’re a s— person.” 

The protestors were near Vance’s home in East Walnut Hills, a neighborhood in Cincinnati. There were somewhere between 30 and 40 protestors who were mostly showing signs in support of the war-torn Eastern European country, WKRC, a local Cincinnati TV station, reported on Saturday. 

Vance did not share what he talked to the protestors about specifically. 

The vice president was part of last month's heated meeting between President Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. The Feb. 28 blow-up grew more intense when Zelensky said that Russia’s President Vladimir Putin could not be trusted to reach a ceasefire agreement and that he had backtracked on several previous ones. 

Vance and Trump claimed that Ukraine’s president was insufficiently grateful for the military aid the U.S. has provided since Russia invaded its neighbor just over three years ago and that Zelensky did not have much leverage to negotiate. 

“You're gambling with the lives of millions of people. You're gambling with World War III. You're gambling with World War III. And what you're doing is very disrespectful to the country, this country,” Trump said. 

Zelensky said Washington does not feel the implications of the conflict now due to its distance from Eastern Europe, but that could change in the future, a remark that prompted a strong rebuttal from the commander-in-chief. 

“Don't tell us what we're going to feel,” Trump said to Zelensky. “We're trying to solve a problem. Don't tell us what we're going to feel.”

After the meeting, Zelensky said he would not apologize for the contentious meeting, but days later, he said it was a “regrettable” huddle. 

The U.S. paused aid to Ukraine and intelligence sharing after the late February meeting. 

Vance, who has expressed skepticism regarding Ukraine aid during his short stint in the Senate, faced pro-Ukraine protestors during his trip to Vermont last weekend, with some calling on him to ski in Russia “because JD Vance has no friends in Vermont.” 

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