One protestor told a local outlet that they were not following the vice president and that they randomly passed him while heading to a nearby protest.
Vice President JD Vance on Saturday said that a group of protesters followed him and his daughter while they were on a walk in his home state of Ohio.
Vance shared his encounter with the pro-Ukraine group on social media, saying that he stopped to patiently engage with the protesters to deter them from further scaring his child.
“Today while walking my 3 year old daughter a group of ‘Slava Ukraini’ protesters followed us around and shouted as my daughter grew increasingly anxious and scared,” Vance wrote in a post on social media platform X. “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.)”
He said the conversation was “mostly respectful,” but criticized the political protesters for “chasing a 3-year-old.”
A nearly three-minute video provided to local media outlet WCPO from the incident shows Vance surrounded by Secret Service agents while protesters asked him about the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine.
“We think it’s in the best interest of our [own people] and frankly in the best interest of the Ukrainians for the war to stop,” Vance said.
One protester also pressed Vance on the recent pause of U.S. support and accused the United States of selling the Ukrainians out. Vance told her that he disagreed.
“With respect, ma’am, I disagree,” he said. “I think that what we’re doing is we’re actually forcing a diplomatic settlement.”
One of the protestors later disputed Vance’s account of the situation and said that they randomly passed the vice president while heading to a nearby protest.
“No one was chasing him,” Ann Henry told WCPO, adding that nobody she knew was purposely following the vice president.
While Henry credited Vance for stopping to talk to them, she would have preferred Vance to characterize the encounter on social media differently.
Saturday’s incident comes as U.S.-Ukraine relations remain shaky following a high-profile, contentious meeting that involved Vance, President Donald Trump, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the Oval Office last month.
Tensions grew as Trump, Vance, and Zelenskyy discussed the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine and a proposed agreement allowing the United States greater access to Ukraine’s rare earth minerals as a way for the war-torn country to compensate for the aid provided by the United States and to continue receiving U.S. support. The rare mineral deal fell apart following the Oval Office blowup.
U.S. officials are planning to meet with a Ukrainian delegation in Saudi Arabia to gauge whether Ukraine is willing to make meaningful concessions to Russia in order to end the three-year war. Trump said that he expects progress from Tuesday’s talks.
Trump also mentioned during his March 4 congressional address that Zelenskyy expressed in a letter after the White House meeting his willingness to sign the economic deal with the United States and to negotiate an end to the war with Russia.