Republican Victoria Spartz, who was born in the Chernihiv region and voted against aid to Ukraine, lost the election to the US House of Representatives in Indiana.
In Indianaʼs 5th District, Spartz led Democrat J.D. Ford. With 99% of the vote counted, he had 51.7% to Spartzʼs 48.3%.
Who is Victoria Spartz?
Victoria Spartz was born in 1978 in Nosivka (Chernihiv region) and moved to the United States in 2000, where she received citizenship 6 years later. Since 2017, she has worked in the Indiana State Senate, later entered major American politics, and in 2020 became the first Ukrainian woman in the US Congress.
After Russia’s full-scale invasion, Spartz was one of the first members of the House of Representatives to call for assistance to Ukraine. In April 2022, she traveled to Kyiv with Republican Senator Steve Daines, the first visit by American officials since February 2022. In total, Spartz visited Ukraine six times in the spring of 2022.
In July 2022, she wrote a letter to Joe Biden asking him to check the “Russian connections” of the head of the President’s Office Andriy Yermak, criticized Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and demanded a more thorough check of what the aid allocated by the United States was used for. There was nothing openly anti-Ukrainian in her statements — she criticized specific officials.
But even then, Democratic Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur called Spartz’s actions “reckless help to Putin”. The Ukrainian diaspora in the United States was also outraged. At the same time, Spartz continued to support Ukraine. And in January 2023, she officially appealed to Biden with a request to provide missiles to Ukraine.
Everything changed in late 2023, when Spartz suddenly criticized the Congressional bill on aid to Ukraine. In the spring of 2024, she, together with anti-Ukrainian Republicans, submitted amendments to the bill that delayed its consideration. And in the end, she voted against it.
For more news and in-depth stories from Ukraine, please follow us on X.