Alexander Vindman

Alexander Semyon Vindman (born Aleksandr Semyonovich Vindman, June 6, 1975) is a retired United States Army lieutenant colonel who was the Director of European Affairs for the United States National Security Council (NSC) until he was reassigned on February 7, 2020. He came to national attention in October 2019 as a key witness before the United States Congress regarding the Trump–Ukraine scandal. His testimony revealed that he triggered the House inquiry, and provided evidence that resulted in a charge of abuse of power in the first impeachment of Donald Trump.

Commissioned in 1999 as an infantry officer, Vindman received a Purple Heart medal for wounds he received from an IED attack in the Iraq War in 2004. He became a foreign area officer specializing in Eurasia in 2008 and assumed the position of Director of European Affairs with the NSC in 2018. In July 2020, Vindman retired after 21 years in the military after his promotion to colonel was delayed, citing vengeful behavior, retaliation, and bullying by President Trump and administration officials after he complied with a subpoena to testify in front of Congress during Trump's impeachment hearings. At the time of his retirement, Vindman's promotion to the rank of colonel had been abnormally stalled and the promotion of hundreds of his peers delayed by the administration.

In February 2022, he unsuccessfully sued several Trump allies, with the case being dismissed early in the proceedings due to the broad protections afforded to the defendants as a result of their service in the Trump Administration. Vindman alleged that the defendants had intimidated and retaliated against him for his congressional testimony.

In January 2026, Vindman launched his campaign for the Democratic Party nomination in the 2026 United States Senate special election in Florida.

Early life and education

Alexander Semyon Vindman (born Aleksandr Semyonovich Vindman) and his identical twin brother Yevgeny were born in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, Soviet Union, to a Jewish family. After the death of their mother, the three-year-old twins and their older brother, Leonid, were brought to New York City in December 1979 by their father, Semyon (Simon). They grew up in the Brighton Beach neighborhood in Brooklyn. The twins appear briefly with their maternal grandmother in the Ken Burns documentary, The Statue of Liberty. Vindman speaks Ukrainian and Russian fluently. He graduated from Franklin Delano Roosevelt High School in 1993.

In 1998, Vindman graduated from the State University of New York at Binghamton with a bachelor of arts degree in history. He completed a Reserve Officers' Training Corps at Cornell University and received a second lieutenant's commission in the Army's Infantry Branch in December 1998. He later received a master of arts degree from Harvard University in Russian, Eastern European, and Central Asian studies. After departing from the National Security Council in 2020, Vindman pursued post-graduate studies at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), and he received both a master's degree in International Affairs in 2021 and his Doctor of International Affairs degree in 2022. He continues to be a senior fellow at the SAIS Foreign Policy Institute. Vindman's doctoral dissertation focused on U.S. Foreign Policy toward Russia and Ukraine from 1991 to 2004.

In 2020, Vindman was appointed as the first Pritzker Military Fellow of the Pritzker Military Foundation. For two years, this fellowship supported Vindman's research, writing, and public discourse on subjects including national security, defense, civil-military relations, and public service. In 2021, Vindman served as a Visiting Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania’s foreign policy center, Perry World House. Starting in 2023, Vindman took on roles as a Hauser Leader and Senior Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School Center for Public Leadership.

Career

Vindman completed the Infantry Officer Basic Course (IOBC) at Fort Benning in 1999. The next year he was sent to South Korea, where he led an anti-armor platoon. In addition to overseas assignments to South Korea and Germany, Vindman is a combat veteran of the Iraq War, having served in Iraq from September 2004 to September 2005. In October 2004, he sustained an injury from a roadside bomb in Iraq, for which he received a Purple Heart. He was promoted to the rank of major in 2008, and to lieutenant colonel in September 2015.

During his Army career, Vindman earned the Ranger Tab, Combat Infantryman Badge, Expert Infantryman Badge, and Parachutist Badge, as well as four Army Commendation Medals, two Defense Meritorious Service Medals, and two Legions of Merit awards. Beginning in 2008, Vindman became a Foreign Area Officer specializing in Eurasia. In this capacity he served in the U.S. embassies in Kyiv, Ukraine, and Moscow, Russia. Returning to Washington, D.C. he was then appointed a politico-military affairs officer focused on Russia for the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Vindman was on the Joint Staff at the Pentagon from September 2015 to July 2018.

National Security Council

In July 2018, Vindman accepted an appointment with the National Security Council. In his role on the NSC, Vindman became part of the U.S. delegation at the inauguration of Ukraine's newly elected president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The five-member delegation, led by Rick Perry, United States Secretary of Energy, also included Kurt Volker, then U.S. Special Representative for Ukraine Negotiations; Gordon Sondland, United States Ambassador to the European Union, and Joseph Pennington, then acting chargé d'affaires.

Vindman was subpoenaed to testify before Congressional investigators on October 29, 2019, as part of the U.S. House of Representatives' impeachment inquiry against Donald Trump. He was the first White House official to testify who was on a July 25, 2019, telephone call between President Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in which Trump asked Zelenskyy to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden's son Hunter Biden, while his father was campaigning for president. Based on his opening statement, obtained in advance by The New York Times, Vindman's testimony corroborates previous testimony from Fiona Hill, his former supervisor, and William B. Taylor Jr., acting Ambassador to Ukraine.

On October 28, 2019, Vindman's opening statement to the House Intelligence Committee, House Foreign Affairs Committee, and House Oversight Committee was released, ahead of his testimony on the following day. Vindman testified that: "In Spring of 2019, I became aware of outside influencers promoting a false and alternative narrative of Ukraine inconsistent with the consensus views of the interagency", which was "harmful to U.S. national security" and also "undermined U.S. Government efforts to expand cooperation with Ukraine". He also stated regarding U.S.-Ukraine relations: "Our partnership is rooted in the idea that free citizens should be able to exercise their democratic rights, choose their own destiny, and live in peace," and that "it has been a great honor to serve the American people and a privilege to work in the White House and on the National Security Council".

Vindman also said that he was concerned by two events, both of which he objected to with senior officials in real time, and which he reported to the National Security Council's lead attorney. The first event occurred at a July 10 meeting between Ukraine's then Secretary of National Security and Defense Council Oleksandr Danylyuk, and then US National Security Advisor John Bolton, at which Ambassadors Volker and Sondland, and Energy Secretary Rick Perry were in attendance, and at which Sondland asked Ukraine to launch investigations into the Bidens in order to get a meeting with President Trump. Vindman states that Bolton cut the meeting short, and that both Vindman and Hill told Ambassador Sondland that his comments were inappropriate and reported their concerns to the lead counsel of the NSC.

The second event was during a July 25 telephone call between Presidents Trump and Zelenskyy. Vindman states, "I was concerned by the call. I did not think it was proper to demand that a foreign government investigate a U.S. citizen, and I was worried about the implications for the U.S. Government's support of Ukraine. I realized that if Ukraine pursued an investigation into the Bidens and Burisma, it would likely be interpreted as a partisan play which would undoubtedly result in Ukraine losing the bipartisan support it has thus far maintained. This would all undermine U.S. national security." Vindman also stated that he reported his concern to the NSC's lead counsel, John Eisenberg.

Vindman later testified in person before the US House of Representatives on November 19, 2019. In his testimony, Vindman stated that in the course of his official duties and standard NSC coordination obligations, he provided a summary of the call via classified means to two core members of his policy committee, one of whom was an intelligence official, concluding that the President's "demand" for an investigation was "improper". Because of his testimony, Vindman was denounced by Trump and repeatedly attacked by Republican lawmakers and television commentators. As a result, he reached out to the Army regarding his and his family's safety.