In February, while the world watched Russia amass 190,000 troops along its border with Ukraine, Vance casually admitted, “I gotta be honest with you, I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine one way or another.”

After Russia attacked, Vance revealed his own confusion about good and evil by implying that Washington, not Moscow, was at fault. He blamed America for pursuing a policy of isolating Russia and agreed that its leaders were using the war as a “smokescreen to cover the disasters in the U.S.”

While Trump has described Vladimir Putin’s war crimes as a “holocaust” and “genocide,” Vance has callously called the invasion a “massive distraction.” He has insisted that his view “is the right position,” and “that whatever is going on in Ukraine, we have to separate our personal reaction to it from … how we should respond as a country.”