Victoria Spartz Controversy Indiana

The Only Ukrainian-Born Member of Congress Voted Against Aid to Ukraine. A Year Later She Called Zelensky a "Moron."

In 2022 Victoria Spartz called Russia's invasion a genocide and described the bombings her grandmother lived through. In 2024, facing a primary where the border polled better, she voted no on $61 billion for Ukraine.

MAGA Report Cards · Aug 11, 2026

The Only Ukrainian-Born Member of Congress Voted Against Aid to Ukraine. A Year Later She Called Zelensky a "Moron."

Victoria Spartz was born in Nosivka, in Ukraine's Chernihiv region, in 1978. She came to the United States in 2000 and became a citizen in 2006. She is the first and only Ukrainian-born member of Congress.

In March 2022, weeks after Russia invaded, she stood at a news conference and called it a genocide. She described the bombings her grandmother and her friends back home had lived through.

On April 20, 2024, the House voted on $61 billion in aid for Ukraine. It passed 311 to 112.

Spartz voted no.

What changed

The Associated Press went to Sheridan, Indiana, a few days later and asked her about it.

She said she was "kind of appalled" at the idea that her heritage should determine her vote, and that she opposed giving "blank checks" without better oversight of how the money was spent.

"My responsibility is the protection of American people," she said.

That is a defensible position. Plenty of members hold it.

Here is the part the AP put right next to it. Spartz was two weeks from a primary against eight challengers in one of the most conservative districts in Indiana — a race made harder because she had announced in early 2023 that she wouldn't run again, then reversed herself, leaving a full year of open runway for opponents.

Her best-funded challenger, state Rep. Chuck Goodrich, had been attacking her over Ukraine, saying she put "Ukraine first." He had loaned his campaign $4.6 million. She went into the final weeks with $134,000 in the bank against his $1.3 million.

And a former Indiana state representative interviewed by the AP described what actually moves Republican primary voters in that district: not Ukraine, but the southern border. Of the field, he said, "They're all gunning to be as Trump-like as possible."

Then there's what the AP watched her do on stage that night. She gave a speech to the voters in that hall about socialism and about Republicans she says act like socialists.

She did not mention the war in Ukraine at all.

"Morons and crooks"

A year later, the criticism stopped being about oversight.

In April 2025, The Telegraph published an interview with Spartz under a headline saying Zelensky must cede land to Russia. She objected that the paper had misrepresented her — the paper amended the headline — and she put out her own statement to set the record straight.

This is what she wrote in that statement:

"I spent an enormous amount of energy trying to help the Ukrainian military to win their brutal fight against Russia. Unfortunately, if you have morons and crooks like Zelensky and his puppet parliament running your country, it's a lost cause."

Her own clarification called the elected government of the country she was born in morons and crooks, and the country itself a lost cause.

On the substance she landed here:

"The current reality on the ground is that Ukraine is not in the position to retake its territories, nor could they agree to give them up permanently."

Her position, in her own words, is a temporary freeze that gives "each side some time to regroup." As the Kyiv Post noted in that same piece, both Kyiv and Moscow have made the same argument about a ceasefire — that it lets the other side regroup for more war later.

The oversight argument didn't survive contact with her own record

The Kyiv Post pointed out one more thing in that piece. Before the $61 billion bill gained traction, Spartz had said that "only weapons can bring peace," while calling for more oversight. Then she voted against the bill that would send the weapons.

You do not have to take a side on Ukraine policy to see the shape of this. She was for it when being for it cost her nothing. She was against it in the eight weeks before a primary she was losing on money. Then, once she'd won, the objection escalated from "we need receipts" to "morons and crooks."

That is the same pattern Hoosiers have watched from her on other things. She said she was retiring, then filed for reelection days before the deadline after nine other Republicans had entered the race. She told The Hill on the morning of February 10, 2026 that it was Congress's job "to decide which tariffs are good, which tariffs are bad" — and that night, after leadership held the vote open for 45 minutes, she switched her vote. She has also signed on to repeal the 17th Amendment and take away Indiana's direct vote for U.S. senators.

Indiana Capital Chronicle columnist Michael Leppert's line about her holds up: "simply unreliable, and that's the kindest description available."

Why Hoosiers should care about any of this

Because Ukraine was the one issue where Victoria Spartz had something nobody else in Congress had — she grew up there, her family is there, she saw the war through her own relatives.

If that is the subject on which she moved with the political wind, the honest question for Indiana's 5th District is which of her positions wouldn't move.

Her constituents are not asking her to vote a particular way on a foreign war. They are asking to know, before an election, what she is actually going to do after one.

We deserve better.