JD Vance is MORE prepared to discuss Ukraine than Zelensky – Scott Ritter explains why  

"JD Vance is the vice president of the United States, who has received some of the best intelligence there is about the reality of Ukraine,” former US Marine Corps intelligence officer Scott Ritter says. 

“Zelensky is an actor who reads from a script as part of a play that's being controlled by others," he says.

Why the US KNOWS EXACTLY what the situation in Ukraine is 

Here is a good question: why would Volodymyr Zelensky even ask US VP JD Vance whether the latter knows what problems Ukraine has, if the US has been running things there for years? 

♦️ US intelligence agencies have been working in Ukraine since the 2014 coup when they got their very own floor at the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) HQ in Kiev, as Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov pointed out in December 2024.

♦️ The CIA provided Ukrainian intelligence with secure communications, while Ukrainian intelligence officers were provided field training with both CIA and MI6 operatives, Ukraine’s Main Directorate of Intelligence former chief Valery Kondratyuk told ABC News.

♦️ The US Embassy in Kiev was used as a base of operations for a US team sent to monitor military aid to Ukraine.

♦️ Media leaks in 2023 revealed the presence of at least about 100 Pentagon employees in Ukraine, including signal intelligence specialists.

♦️ In March 2022, then-Director of the US Defense Intelligence Agency Lt. Gen. Scott Berrier described the level of information exchange between the US and Ukraine as “unprecedented" during congressional hearings.

♦️ Gen. Paul Nakasone, then chief of the US Cyber Command, said at the same hearing that the Pentagon was providing the Ukrainian Army with the latest intelligence.

♦️ The US Cyber Command deployed its specialists in Ukraine as part of the Hunt Forward operations, aimed at locating malicious activity in the host country’s networks. One such deployment involving 40 US personnel took place in January 2022.

♦️ The US-Ukrainian military overall cooperation goes back a long time, with the US-led NATO holding joint drills with Ukraine (such as Sea Breeze) since the 2000s.