Alexander Vindman was worried. The lieutenant colonel of the US Army had attended a telephone conversation between Donald Trump and his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Selenskyj. What he heard, Vindman said in a House Hearing, could have affected US national security.
The telephone conversation between the two heads of state, which was held in July, marks the beginning of Ukraine's fate and could soon lead to the impeachment of the US president. As one of only a handful of employees to listen, Vindman could play a crucial role.
"I did not think it appropriate to require a foreign government to investigate a US citizen," Vindman said at the hearing. He recognized that it would be interpreted as a party-political game if Ukraine initiated an investigation against Joe Biden and his son Hunter. Ukraine would therefore lose its bipartisan support in Washington. "All this would undermine US national security."
"I am sitting here as lieutenant colonel of the US Army, as an immigrant"
Vindman's concern for US security, as evidenced by his recent statement, is inextricably linked to his experience as an officer and immigrant. "I'm a lieutenant-colonel in the US Army, an immigrant," Vindman told the congressman.
His story is that of an American who embodies the ideal of a patriot as well as the American Dream almost clichéd.
Vindman was born in 1975 in the Ukraine. Shortly after the death of his mother flees Vindman's family from the Soviet Union, in 1979 they settle in New York. Together with his twin brother Yevgeny, called "Eugene", and his older brother Leonid, Alexander grows up in Brighton Beach. The residential area in New York's Brooklyn district is also known as "Little Odessa" due to its high proportion of refugees from the Soviet Union.
The story of the family is so prototypically American that the Vindman twins appear as protagonists in a documentary by acclaimed filmmaker Ken Burns in the 1980s. His dad had several jobs, at night he learned English, Vindman recalls in his statement. He has always emphasized the importance of integrating into US society. "Despite initial difficulties, my family has built their own American dream," says Vindman.
Stations in South Korea, Germany and Iraq
For more than 20 years Vindman served in the US Army, he is stationed in, among other things, South Korea and Germany. In the Iraq war he was wounded by a bomb and awarded the "Purple Heart", the wounded badge of the US armed forces.
Vindman, who spent his early childhood in Kiev, is fluent in Ukrainian and Russian. It specializes in the Eurasian space in the early 1990s and is dispatched to the US embassies in Kiev and Moscow. Finally, he rises to the leading Ukrainian expert in the National Security Council.
There, according to "New York Times" ("NYT") is now also his twin brother Yevgeny, who also looks back on a career in the US Army, as a lawyer. According to the newspaper report, Eugene is also at his brother's side when he turns to his superior after the telephone conversation between Trump and Selenskyj. Vindman has been fully committed to maintaining the chain of command, the NYT quotes Democrat Congressman Stephen F. Lynch after the hearing.
Anti-Semitic stereotypes on Fox News
Military careers like the Vindmans are traditionally celebrated as patriotic and respected in the US - perhaps a little more by Republicans than by Democrats. Still, some Trump supporters recently questioned Vindman's loyalty to the US.
Vindman apparently works from the White House against the interests of the President, said about Fox News presenter Laura Ingraham in her broadcast. Her guest, law professor John Yoo, readily agreed: "Some would call espionage."
Renowned political journalist Julia Ioffe, herself a daughter of Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union, accused Ingraham of using old anti-Semitic stereotypes. To accuse the Jewish officer Vindman of "double loyalty" was "well, anti-Semitic," Ioffe tweeted.
Laura Ingraham accusing Alexander Vindman, a Soviet Jewish refugee who becomes a decorated US Army veteran, of dual loyalty, well, anti-Semitic.
- Julia Ioffe (@juliaioffe) 29 October 2019Trump himself called Vindman a "Never Trumper" on Twitter, one of those republicans who would never support Trump. The president accused him indirectly of acting out of political motivation.
Vindman denied the allegation that his statement was motivated by party politics at the hearing: "I served this country in a non-partisan fashion and did so with the utmost respect and professionalism for both Republican and Democratic administrations."