Ramaswamy is willfully ignorant on Ukraine

His amateurish attacks on Nikki Haley show she is preparing to lead America during a time if great instability and he is preparing to be a B-list cable news pundit.

GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, in a post-debate tweet, accused Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenksy of a litany of horrors, then attacked Ambassador Nikki Haley for not mentioning them. She did not mention them because they are all somewhere between misleading and completely false and easily disproved by anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of how to use Google.

Let’s start with the most egregious, because it puts the lives of Christians in Ukraine in danger.

RAMASWAMY TWEET: (Zelensky) bans Christians from worshiping in their churches.

This is nonsense. What Ramaswamy (and everyone on the debate platform) should be talking about is that tens of thousands of Protestant Christians in Ukraine are being singled out for torture and abuse at the hands of the Russians. Some of those doing the persecuting are the clergy of the church Ramaswamy is trying to defend, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church - Moscow Patriarch.

The Ukrainian Orthodox Church - Moscow Patriarch is the remnants of the Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine and as the name implies, its clergy report to Patriarch Kiril in Moscow.

Many of Kiril’s clergy are actively working for the Kremlin. It is not difficult to do a Google image search for photos of Moscow clergy blessing Russian tanks, planes and troops headed for Ukraine with holy water. In an effort to boost recruiting for the Russian army, Kiril announced that Russian soldiers dying in Ukraine would have all their sins washed away. One Moscow-backed priest in Ukraine is accused of leading invading Russian soldiers to the homes of people who would be most likely to oppose Russia, leading to the deaths of hundreds of Ukrainian women and children.

These are the people that Vivek Ramaswamy is defending.

Eighty-five percent of Ukrainians polled favor the government taking action against these representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church who are causing mayhem in Ukraine—66 percent of Ukrainians want the Russian Orthodox Church banned completely in Ukraine.

Quite literally, if someone on Ramaswamy’s staff had randomly dialed any number in Ukraine, they had a better than four out of five chance of getting the real story.

Rather than defend Kremlin agents, Ramaswamy should use his platform to bring to light the widespread persecution of Ukrainian Protestants by Russian soldiers. Protestants in general and evangelicals in particular are associated with America and get “special treatment” from the Russians. One evangelical Christian friend of mine reports being held and tortured for 25 days by Russian forces. When his captors found out he was evangelical, they called in a Russian Orthodox priest who tried to cast the demons out of him using a taser and a baseball bat. An April 2023 study shows that Protestants account for one-third of the reported cases of persecution of religious minorities by the Russians in Ukraine, despite making up only 5% of Ukraine’s population.

Ramaswamy’s willingness to protect the Russians at the expense of Christians being tortured speaks volumes about how he might govern.

RAMASWAMY TWEET: (Zelensky) has the brass to extort us by threatening to forgo democratic elections unless the American people cough up another $135 million.

Here is how to tell if the Ukrainian people are unhappy about elections. Are there millions of people in the streets all over Ukraine protesting? No? OK, then the Ukrainians are not worked up about elections. This is a country that had revolutions in 2004 and 2014 to throw out a president they thought to be corrupt and election results they thought fraudulent.

The data supports that Ukrainians don’t want elections at this point in the war. A September poll of Ukrainians from the International Republican Institute shows that only 28% of Ukrainians polled want elections next year. With some 6 million Ukrainians outside Ukraine, 3.6 million internally displaced and another 1.5 million in uniform fighting the Russians, it would be incredibly difficult and extremely expensive to ensure everyone has the opportunity to vote. As someone who might be an election observer in such an election, not many of us want to go ensure ballot integrity at the front so everyone in the military can vote.

The IRI poll shows the military to be very popular. Seventy-eight percent of Ukrainians want to see a political party formed by military veterans. Veterans is the key word. They military is not yet done with the job, and would have a heck of a time trying to campaign right now.

Ukraine estimates the cost of an election during wartime is $135 million, and Ukrainians want every penny going to defend their freedom. Ukraine’s military commander Valerii Zaluzhnyi has said he needs a breakthrough technology in order to win, and lists drones high on his priority list. Ukraine’s incredibly innovative and entrepreneurial drone industry is producing drones for $100,000 each that have taken out $40 million in Russian armor. When given the choice of poorly administered, likely unfair elections without the military candidates they want or 1350 tank killing drones, they choose drones.

RAMASWAMY TWEET: Zelensky has banned 11 opposition parties…

These eleven political parties had strong Russian ties. The largest party banned was led by Viktor Medvechuk, who is under both US and UK sanctions. Not to mention, Putin is godfather to his daughter. Yevhen Mauryev, the man who Putin wanted to install as president of Ukraine after the February 2022 invasion, led another party.

While nobody wants to see any parties banned, one can understand the Ukrainian sense of caution in giving these guys a political platform during wartime.

Ukraine does not lack for opposition parties. Eleven parties besides Zelensky’s are represented in the Ukrainian parliament. Dozens more have representation on the provincial and local level.

RAMASWAMY TWEET: …and consolidated all state media into a single entity.

This one is a head scratcher. Isn’t that the definition of state media? A single entity? PBS? BBC?

If Ramaswamy is implying that Ukraine has some sort of restriction of the press, I have not seen it, with the exception of filming militarily sensitive locations. I know first hand that they are very intense about filming in the wrong place.

Ukraine has many, many news shows, both on broadcast TV and the internet, including an official channel created during the war, United News, designed to create unity in the face of an enemy that wants to kill everyone in Ukraine. United News is not without controversy from Zelensky’s rivals - but they are free to do that. It is also not without competitors. An August 2023 study showed that only 37% of Ukrainians watched United News.

I have been a guest on several competitors, large and small - News Live, Ukraine National TV - Kharkiv, The Gaze and others. I was never told what to say.

TV is only part of the news media ecosystem. Like Americans, many Ukrainians get their news from social media instead of or in addition to TV.

Reporters Without Borders says that more than 1000 Ukrainian journalists have been credentialed. They don’t all work for United News.

RAMASWAMY TWEET: Zelensky isn’t some paragon of democratic leadership.

Reasonable people can debate and disagree about the impact on Ukraine’s democracy the Zelenksy’s wartime leadership will have… but in terms of leadership, Zelensky definitely has Ramaswamy beat.