How Ukraine Aid Was Passed - The View from the Front
The Ukraine Freedom Project spent all our waking hours for the last year building Republican support for Ukraine. We beat Tucker Carlson.
The Financial Times credits “a campaign by evangelicals” for Speaker Johnson’s change of heart on aid to Ukraine.
Ukraine Freedom Project and its sister organization, Ukraine Freedom Action, developed and ran that campaign.
Former Rep. Ken Buck is a friend of Speaker Johnson. In a CNN interview, he said:
<Johnson> became aware within the last month or two that Russia has targeted evangelical Baptist Christians in Ukraine. And I think that had a real impact on Mike and his willingness to risk everything to try to deal with this issue.
This is the exact creative that we used on digital ads Ukraine Freedom Action ran in his district for most of 2024 leading up to the vote.
The Ukraine Freedom Project is a 501c3 and we run on tax deductible donations. If you like what we are doing and would like to see us do more to push back on Russian propaganda and help Ukraine on Capitol Hill, please donate here.
Speaker Johnson was a Baptist activist prior to being elected to Congress and Christians are a big part of the Republican party. Eighty-two percent of Republicans identify as Christian. Almost 40% identify as evangelical Christians, and they tend to be the most vocal.
Ukraine’s Unsung Hero
An unsung hero of the fight for Ukraine aid is Viktor Chernaiivsky. In December of 2022, Viktor approached me in our shared co-working facility, stuck out his hand and said “Hi, I am Viktor. I am an evangelical Christian.”
Americans are not as forward about their faith. In Ukraine, evangelicals are quite evangelical.
Viktor went on to say that he had been tortured by Russians for 25 days in occupied Luhansk, including one day when the Russians tortured him with an electrical taser and a Russian Orthodox priest stood over him and tried to cast demons out of him for being an evangelical Christian.
If Viktor had not been as passionate about his faith and as open about his torture, we may not have been aware of the atrocities committed against Ukrainian Christians by Russians in occupied Ukraine.
About that same time, Tucker Carlson and other Russian propagandists began accusing President Zelensky of persecuting Christians. I started having this message reflected back to me by friends on Capitol Hill. Sixty percent of Republican voters identify as evangelical Christians. Tucker’s half-truths and nonsense were driving them away from Ukraine.
I knew if American Christians and Republicans heard Viktor’s testimony, it would make a difference. We managed to get his story into the blog for the Acton Institute, a widely respected think tank on religion and liberty, in January of last year. This would be the first of scores of stories we would tell in the media about Russia torturing and murdering Ukrainian Christians for their faith.
Speaker Johnson is a devout man. We saw two things drive him to make the historically courageous decision to put his job on the line to pass aid to Ukraine.
The intelligence briefings gave him the intellectual information he needed to understand the role Ukraine plays in global stability and why supporting Ukraine is in the interests of the United States.
Our work, and the work of our allies, gave Johnson the spiritual and emotional connection to Ukraine that he needed.
Ukraine Freedom Project Led The Way in Highlighting Russia’s Torture of Christians
We started with Viktor in January, and by fall we began a campaign highlighting Russia’s torture and oppression of Christians in earnest. At that time, almost nobody else was talking about it.
The Institute for the Study of War published a great piece on Russian persecution of religious minorities in April of 2023. The Institute for Religious Freedom in Kyiv had jumped in at the beginning of the war and documented atrocities as had others, but none of it had gained widespread exposure nor had it gained attention in the Christian or conservative spheres.
I wrote an op-ed in September and shopped it around to every publication I could find. After a month, our first piece was published in Providence Magazine, an outstanding but niche Christian foreign policy publication, in October of 2023.
In contrast, the week before the April 20 vote, I was talking about Russia torturing Christians in USA Today, TIME Magazine, on Fox Radio and in Newsweek - twice.
Even the Zelensky administration became aware of the political power of our messaging with an op-ed in The Hill in early April by his chief of staff, Andriy Yermak. Zelensky also called about 30 Christian leaders into his office in that time frame and asked them to reach out to their American contacts. We had nothing to do with this, as it would be a violation of the Foreign Agent Registration Act, but it shows how far the message we started has spread.
This past weekend, the Office of the President sponsored the Ukrainian National Prayer Breakfast, with Christians, Muslims, Buddhists and leaders of many faiths from all over the world in attendance.
UFP Put More than 75 Stories into the Media
Since October of last year, we found more than 98 stories in the media on Russia torturing Christians. Forty-six name me or the Ukraine Freedom Project specifically. Another 28 are directly attributable to our efforts.
More than ¾ of the stories on Russia torturing Christians between October of last year and the April vote on aid to Ukraine were generated by our work.
The Data Shows We Beat Tucker Carlson
Our poll from November 4 of last year showed that 70% of evangelical Republicans were more likely to support aid to Ukraine when informed about Russia’s torture and murder of Christians in Ukraine, thus prompting our campaign.
To assess our impact on passing the legislation, we polled Republican primary voters the week after the vote, the week of the 22nd of April. We asked if they had seen, read or heard anything about Russia torturing and murdering Christians in occupied Ukraine for their faith.
More than ⅓ of Republican primary voters reported hearing something about our work.
We asked the same question about the narrative being propagated by Tucker Carlson and Marjorie Taylor Greene - that Zelensky persecutes Christians. Only 22% of Republican primary voters reported hearing that narrative.
The data shows we beat the Russian propagandists.
Tucker Carlson is worth hundreds of millions of dollars. The Ukraine Freedom Project is a 501c3 organization that runs on tax deductible donations. We stood up to Tucker and won. If you would like to see us do more like this, please donate here.
Overview of Our Activities
In addition to Steven, Anna Shvetsova is our COO. She is former COO to two Ukrainian startups and now a commentator on US politics on Ukrainian TV.
In addition to our media work, here are some of the other activities that drove our message:
We met with nearly 100 Republican Congressional offices about Russia torturing Christians between September 2023 and January 2024. Anna is among the Ukrainians who know the most people on Capitol Hill.
We generated a letter of support for Speaker Johnson signed by seventy Republican foreign policy experts and former members of Congress.
As referenced above, Ukraine Freedom Action ran digital ads in Louisiana for most of 2024 and teamed with Razom, convincing that organization to use some of their outreach budget for the Russia Tortures Christians message.
In particular, a former member of Congress who knows Johnson told us that he is personally inspired by the Old Testament story of Esther. Both Razom and our organization used this verse extensively.
Pavlo Unguryan was widely credited in the media with creating an emotional and spiritual connection with Ukraine in meetings with Speaker Johnson. He is an amazing man and a great advocate for Ukraine. We paid for two of his trips to DC.
Ukraine Freedom Action also ran digital ads and other outreach campaigns in 15 other Congressional districts.
The Ukraine Freedom Project educated evangelical Christians with digital ads in areas of the country with large evangelical populations.
We helped generate and amplify impactful social media posts at crucial times from the Chief Rabbi of Ukraine, conservative influencers like Erik Erickson and many other conservative and Christian leaders.
Our team attended Ukrainian Week and the International Religious Freedom Summit, January 29-February 2, 2024 Washington DC, getting the message out to hundreds of activists.
As a crucial part of generating media coverage, our team attended the National Religious Broadcasters convention February 19-22, 2024 in Nashville and primed scores of religious broadcasters about the Russia tortures Christians message.
I attended the Ukraine Action Summit the weekend before the vote, where I spoke to 500 activists about the Russia tortures Christians message, helping them understand how to use it in their Hill meetings.
We also played a convening role. Sarah Makin, one of our consultants, was previously Trump’s Special Assistant for Religious Freedom. She pulled together about 20 experts in religious freedom in early April where we gave a presentation on Russia torturing Christians. It generated much of the media in April.
Now the Ukraine Freedom Project is working to maintain conservative support for aid to Ukraine. Additionally, we have started thinking of ourselves as a pro-bono advocacy organization helping Ukraine on Capitol Hill. We are in a global information war. The Ukraine Freedom Project is leading the charge in that war.
We are working on implementing on helping Ukrainian prisoners of war and of course, getting good information from the Ukrainian front to policymakers in DC.
For a deep dive on Russia’s systematic persecution of Ukraine’s Christians, have a look at the Mission Eurasia report by Rev. Mikhailo Brytsyn called Faith Under Fire.
The Ukraine Freedom Project is a 501c3 and we run on tax deductible donations. If you like what we are doing, please donate here.
Nothing delights me more than refuting the lie that Ukraine persecutes Christians. Tucker Carlson can go to perdition.
Does your organization make releases available for people to submit to their local papers to generate grassroots support? My local newspaper is very conservative, as is the population of my county. They have regularly voted 70 to 85% in favor of republican candidates at all levels.