Putin's Whip and Baghdad Bob

If Russia's invasion of Ukraine weren't killing so many people, much of it would be entertaining. Here is the story of Robert Amsterdam, lobbyist for the Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine.

If you have not seen Jillian Kay Melchior's excellent piece on religious liberty in Ukraine, read it after you are done with this piece. Mine is a bit more entertaining but hers is a deep dive on Ukraine's efforts to maintain religious liberty while trying to restrain a religious organization that is controlled by Russia. And very well done.

She mentions our work. I helped her out a bit with this piece, and was stoked to see it come out so well.

Some folks on the far right are telling people that President Zelensky is persecuting Christians in Ukraine - Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, J.D. Vance and Rand Paul among them. And our visits to 100 Congressional offices show it is having an impact. About a third of the offices we visited noted concerns about Ukraine’s government persecuting Christians as a reason they are reluctant to support aid to Ukraine.

In reality, the Russians are persecuting Protestants in the occupied parts of Ukraine.

Patriarch Kirill and Russia’s dictator Putin share a moment at a Russian Orthodox Church ceremony in 2023.

In case you are super busy, here is Jillian's definitive paragraph:

"The evidence doesn’t support the accusation that Ukraine is persecuting Orthodox Christians. The national-security threat posed by some factions of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church is genuine, and Ukraine is addressing it in a careful, measured way. There’s a coordinated campaign to convince U.S. voters and lawmakers otherwise, and they shouldn’t be fooled."

Robert Amsterdam is a lawyer/lobbyist who is one of the folks doing the fooling. He is telling members of Congress and staff that the Ukrainian government is persecuting the Ukrainian Orthodox Church - Moscow Patriarch, the branch of the Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine. As the name implies, its clergy report to Patriarch Kirill in Moscow. Patriarch Kirill has been called "Putin's alter boy" by Pope Francis.

Bob is super funny, and I suggest you follow him on Twitter.

One of his consistent talking points is that the Ukrainian Orthodox Church - Moscow Patriarch has severed all ties with the Russian Orthodox Church.

I giggle every time he posts this on Twitter.

He is paid by a Russian oligarch who is currently a deacon in Russian Orthodox Church to say this.

Again, Robert Amsterdam has been hired by a Russian oligarch who is currently an official in the Russian Orthodox Church to tell people that the branch of the Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine has broken ties with Moscow.

This is Baghdad Bob level stuff.

The rest of his claims about the Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine have a similar level of audacity. His other clients include the government of Venezuela, Russia’s strongest ally in Latin America, and Kim DotCom, another Russian propagandist. Amsterdam is “Bad Guys R Us.” I wonder if he gives a group discount to the pro-Russian folks.

The Russian oligarch in question, Vadym Novynskyi, is worth talking about as well. He gained Ukrainian citizenship from Viktor Yanukovych, the pro-Russian president of Ukraine who was ousted when millions of Ukrainians flooded the streets in 2014. Yanukovych fled to Russian where he remains today.

Yanukovych’s largesse toward Novynskyi extended to a seat in the Ukrainian parliament where Novynskyi became known as Putin’s Whip for aggressively forwarding pro-Russia legislation.

The Ukrainian government froze Putin’s Whip’s assets at the beginning of the full scale invasion and he fled the country. Most recently, Novinskyi popped up in a Zurich branch of the Russian Orthodox Church conducting services as a deacon.

Amsterdam would have you believe that Putin’s Whip is worried about the ancient traditions of the branch of the Russian Orthodox Church of Ukraine, the golden domes, the smokey incense, and just wants to see them saved from the aggressive Ukrainian government.

Putin’s Whip wouldn’t be paying Amsterdam to tell Congress that Zelensky persecutes Christians in an effort to peel of the support of devout Republicans for additional aid to Ukraine. Certainly not.

Putin’s Whip is interested in maintaining the 6000 or so churches and monasteries across Ukraine operated by clergy that report to Moscow because he is concerned about Orthodox spirituality. It’s not like those 6000 churches would make an excellent spy network to report Ukrainian troop movements or spread pro-Russia propaganda.

Look at the shiny golden domes! Don’t look at the spy network.

To be fair, by all accounts Novinskyi is devout. But it is hard to say how much of his lobbying effort in DC is because of his love of the Russian Orthodox Church and how much of this is because of his love of the Russian Autocratic Leader.

As Jillian points in her piece, and I have detailed elsewhere, the Russian Orthodox Church is not a church as we would think of one. It is a working arm of the Kremlin. So Novinskyi’s motives really don’t matter. The oligarch’s money is buying him the same thing in Congress from Amsterdam.

One final thing to note about Amsterdam’s efforts is the real damage he is doing in Ukraine. As many as 80 priests from the Ukrainian Orthodox Church - Moscow Patriarch are on trial for various forms of espionage and war crimes. One particularly horrific example is Bucha, the Kyiv suburb where Russians executed some 500 civilians ranging in age from 2 to 92 and raped girls as young as 14. A clergyman from the branch of the Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine reportedly welcomed invading Russian troops and led them to the homes of those who would be most likely to oppose them.

The multi-million dollar campaign being paid for by the Russians, utilizing Amsterdam and repeated by conservative influencers is obscuring the real horrors faced daily by Ukraine’s Christians in occupied parts of Ukraine. Anyone not Russian Orthodox - primarily evangelical Protestants - have to worship underground. As many as 30 Christian leaders have been killed by Russians in Ukraine. Many more have been tortured with electricity and beaten with baseball bats. Have a look at RussiaTorturesChristians.org to find out more.

And read Jillian’s piece. And don’t forget to subscribe to my Substack - less frequent content than the WSJ but the subscription is cheaper (currently free) and if you take the paid option, it comes with a free cup of coffee with me in Kyiv, DC, Warsaw, Tulsa, San Diego or whatever city in which we both happen to both share at the time.