Where did Zelensky lie to American Christians? Shame on Rosenberg’s show
We publish an analysis of Zelensky’s conversation with Rosenberg about the UOC by the author of Perhyi Kozatskyi (The First Cossack).
What could be worse than the deliberate justification of religious discrimination?
Worse than playing the lawyer for those who trample on Christians’ rights and commit violence against people because of their faith?
What could be worse than brazen lies, designed to conceal persecution and whitewash the persecutors?
Only one thing: when all of this is done by a man who calls himself a Christian, and does it on Christian television. Today we will speak about such a man.
The visit of Joel Rosenberg
At the beginning of September, Ukraine was visited by the American-Israeli writer Joel Rosenberg, an activist of one of the Evangelical churches and a leader of the “Christian Zionist” movement. As he himself admitted, he came at the invitation of the head of “Kvartal 95.”
He sat down for a short interview with Zelensky – which turned out to be dedicated mainly to media whitewashing of the so-called “regime of spiritual independence,” shielding it from the more than well-grounded accusations of persecuting Ukrainian Christians.
And now to the gems of this so-called conversation, which looked far more like a set of talking points prepared by Zelensky’s PR team. Most likely, when Rosenberg was first invited to Ukraine, the role he was to play was explained to him, and he performed it dutifully.
Citing American voices, Rosenberg noted that Zelensky was being criticized for terror against the Church.
“But I have spoken with Christian leaders since I arrived here, and they tell me the opposite: only Russian Orthodox priests, who were spying or working for Moscow, have been arrested,” Rosenberg declared.
How does that sound?
Something like this: I came to Jerusalem, spoke with the Pharisees under the watchful eye of Roman legionaries, and they assured me that there are no persecutions, no one has been crucified – and if anyone was, it was just some criminal and heretic, not worth attention, who deserved it and suffered lawfully. That is more or less how Rosenberg’s words look.
Here one wants to pause on every single word, and on the very logic of a man who, in order to find out whether Christians are being persecuted and whether their rights are intact, turns to anyone at all – except the persecuted Christians themselves.
Because it is unimaginable that representatives of the UOC told him such things. Which means he simply did not meet with them – unsurprising, since in Zelensky’s “democracy” they have been crossed off the list of Christians altogether, as unworthy of dialogue.
Rosenberg spoke only with those to whom he was led – priests of “special designation,” so to speak. Their task is to say at every meeting with foreigners: “All is calm in Baghdad, we are freer than ever, glory to the wise leader.”
Thus, the state of religious freedom under this regime was explained to him by the regime itself – through its fully controlled organ called the AUCCRO, something like a club of pocket “religious leaders” who sold their consciences and serve not God, but power.
But to form one’s conclusions about the absence of persecution solely through conversations with those hand-picked by the very authorities interested in laundering their image – that is quite something. And given that Rosenberg hardly looks like a fool, we can only conclude that he was never interested in the truth to begin with. His mission here was simple: at Zelensky’s invitation, to help Zelensky wash away the blood and the stench of sulfur.
The lie about arrested clergy
Now to the second part of his first thesis: that in Ukraine “only Russian Orthodox priests, spying or working for Moscow, were arrested.”
Does Rosenberg, or his informants, mean Metropolitan Arseniy, who has been held illegally in prison for a year and a half? Is he a spy? What exactly did he supposedly uncover, and how did he “work for Moscow”?
Or perhaps they mean Hero of Ukraine Metropolitan Longin, protector of hundreds of orphans? Is he a spy too, an agent of Moscow?
To speak such slander is to heap lies upon great ascetics, benefactors, and confessors – upon the spiritual leaders of hundreds of thousands of Orthodox Christians. A true believer would never dare to utter this, fearing that God’s wrath would strike his tongue dumb. One must ask: what does this “Christian Zionist” Rosenberg really believe in?
And note well: Rosenberg consulted not only with these so-called “Christian leaders.” By his own admission, before interviewing Zelensky he also spoke with Mike Pompeo. What a choice of source – bravo!
The utterly odious former head of the CIA, who did everything possible to persecute Ukrainian Christians and to engineer the creation of the OCU. Surely such a man would never lie, surely he would provide absolutely objective information. About as objective as Epifaniy or Poroshenko – Zelensky might as well have gone straight to them for an “unbiased opinion.”
The old mantra of “greatest religious freedom”
Rosenberg then added that “Ukraine has the greatest religious freedom of all post-Soviet countries.” Where have we heard that phrase before? At least a hundred times – from the PR mouthpieces of “spiritual independence,” repeating this magic incantation on every occasion.
But what is that mantra worth?
Thousands of beaten and maimed parishioners of the UOC, robbed of their churches. Priests and bishops hounded. Television channels spewing hatred against the UOC. Attempts at every level to ban our Church.
This is attested to in countless reports and testimonies from the UN, the OSCE, and other international human rights organizations. All one needs to do is open one’s eyes, to look with one’s own eyes at the abundant video evidence of crimes and violence.
To deny this is possible only by squeezing one’s eyes shut and selling one’s conscience wholesale. One wonders: how is Rosenberg’s “Christian conscience” doing these days?
Zelensky’s cynicism
But Zelensky would not be himself if he did not prove even more cynical than Rosenberg.
He spoke of the UOC’s Transfiguration Cathedral in Odesa, destroyed by a Russian missile (of course, without naming its confessional affiliation – just “a cathedral in a tourist zone”), and then mused about the “necessity of banning” the Church.
The very Church that owned that cathedral, whose grief and material losses he exploits for tearful PR – even as he seeks to annihilate its very soul.
“All these statements are manipulations. Fact: Ukrainian law prohibits any religious or other organization from having legal ties with the aggressor state. This is right. But during war it is normal not to have legal ties with the ROC. This is not about persecution or closing a specific church. These are important legal issues, and all this is quite understandable.”
What kind of “legal ties” and “legal issues” are we even talking about, when not even DESS bureaucrats dare to stoop so low as to lie about any “legal ties” with the ROC? And yet the President, with a straight face, once again unleashes this world-class falsehood upon foreign journalists.
Even his own religious bureaucrats have admitted there are no such “legal ties.”
Zelensky uses the false phrase deliberately, to make his crackdown seem less barbaric. Or else he is so utterly ignorant (or pretends to be) that later he can leave himself an escape and say: “My subordinates misled me, I was misinformed!” – thus dodging responsibility for his own crimes.
It is worth pausing separately on the footage of the ruined UOC church and the statistics of destruction. These numbers are meant to divert attention away from the religious repressions of Zelensky’s regime against its own citizens, shifting the focus instead onto Russia’s crimes and the losses the Church has suffered in the course of the war.
We do not even need to remind anyone that war destroys cities indiscriminately. Mines, bombs, artillery shells, downed drones, and missiles do not care whether their target is a house or a church. Throughout history, there have always been strikes on every type of structure, except perhaps military and industrial ones. On both sides.
Of course, ultimately, responsibility for all losses lies with the aggressor – Russia. But one must not equate collateral damage from the chaos of war with the deliberate destruction and discrimination carried out on the basis of religious identity. These are fundamentally different types of crimes. Throughout the war we have heard only a handful of testimonies from local residents suggesting that the enemy deliberately targeted churches. Such claims are chilling – and we cannot ignore them.
But equally impossible to ignore is the fact that Zelensky and his propaganda machine cynically speak of the UOC’s losses, of murdered clergy and faithful, with tears in their eyes – while at the same time annihilating the very Church whose suffering they parade before the world. The very Church Zelensky himself ordered to be banned and forced that ban through parliament.
And so a question arises. Gentlemen, why, when recalling these 600 damaged or destroyed churches, do you fail to mention the thousands of churches that were seized, stolen, and confiscated from the UOC? How great is the difference for the communities who lost their places of worship – whether a bomb obliterated them, or the OCU’s militants simply took them by force? In the latter case, after all, the crime is committed not by an outside aggressor, but by their own state, together with the destruction of justice, of law itself, of the very right to freedom of religion.
If Mr. Rosenberg knew these figures, perhaps he would have asked himself: how did it come to pass that the Zelensky regime and the OCU became a plague upon UOC communities? The numbers tell the truth without ambiguity.
And here is another problem for the authorities: when in May 2024 the UOC chapel of Sts. Olga and Vladimir of the Desiatynnyi Monastery was demolished in Kyiv by an excavator; when in the spring of 2023 the UOC’s Vladimir Church in Lviv was razed by bulldozers; and when earlier one of the last UOC churches in Ivano-Frankivsk was likewise destroyed – there were no Russian bombs, rockets, or occupiers anywhere nearby. The Ukrainian authorities handled it themselves. Why not ask about this?
But no – Rosenberg came here to chatter away the truth, to help Zelensky conceal his sins behind the curtain of Russian crimes.
And speaking of crimes – we have not yet hit bottom. Brace yourselves, for it gets worse. Zelensky, allegedly contrasting free and democratic Ukraine with Russia, went on to accuse the Russian Federation of using clergy as hostages for prisoner exchanges.
“Frankly, this is impossible to understand. From the point of view of international law it is unacceptable,” declared the persecutor of the Church.
Impossible to understand? Unacceptable under international law?
So detaining clergy and using them as bargaining chips Zelensky presents as uniquely Russian barbarism. That’s the story he wants the world to believe. But what, then, shall we call the demands of the regime’s “spiritual independence” officials to arrest UOC clergy precisely in order to use them in exchanges? What about the calls to trade even the Primate himself?
These “unacceptable under international law” actions are precisely what the representatives of the GUR, members of the ruling party, military commanders, and media figures have been demanding.
Andriy Yusov of the GUR, for example, openly supported the idea of using UOC clergy as “exchange material.” Denys Prokopenko, Colonel of the National Guard and commander of the Azov Corps, publicly called for swapping priests for captured Azov fighters. The UN Human Rights Office reported on pressure against Metropolitan Ionafan aimed at forcing him into such an exchange. The lawyer of Metropolitan Pavlo, abbot of the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra, testified that investigators tried to compel his client to accept an exchange.
UOC attorney Robert Amsterdam revealed that the investigators pursuing the fabricated case against Metropolitan Theodosiy of Cherkasy and Kaniv attempted to coerce him into becoming a “prisoner of war” in return for dropping charges.
And here are the words of priest and human rights defender Fr. Serhiy Chertylin, who spent nearly six months in pretrial detention on insane, fabricated charges:
“The new wave of pressure on Metropolitan Theodosiy of Cherkasy arose from his refusal to accept an exchange. My own case bears all the same marks. For a long time I could not understand why the investigators ascribed to me such utterly unrealistic roles in the Church – from blocking legislation to leading organizations with which I had no connection. But everything becomes clear if you see me and other UOC clergy not as guilty of anything, but precisely as ‘exchange goods.’”
And here is the statement of journalist Sonia Koshkina, close to the “spiritual independence” regime – author of filthy slanders against priests, which even a Ukrainian court ruled defamatory:
“I can only imagine how much they’ll give for Arseniy of Sviatohirsk (he is, of course, a Russian citizen. Back in 2014 in the Lavra he supposedly sheltered Girkin’s militants and their weapons). I wish they would just sentence him already – then he could be swapped. Besides him, at least 13 metropolitans of the MP are under investigation, plus a bundle of lower-ranking ones. A perfect exchange fund.”
According to reliable information, this is exactly what Ukrainian security services demand from imprisoned clergy, jailed under fabricated charges. Representatives of the Ukrainian state have repeatedly and publicly called for Orthodox priests to be treated as hostages, as bargaining chips for exchanges.
And all this is not “unacceptable under international law”?
Or is it acceptable, so long as it is the state persecuting its own citizens, rather than an occupier persecuting the occupied? Perhaps we are simply occupied from both sides?
And finally, Zelensky himself spoke of UOC priests allegedly held captive in Russia. We would very much like to know the actual grounds for their detention. Were they suspected of military or intelligence activity on behalf of Ukraine – in the same way the SBU now arrests priests on such accusations?
This is not a trivial question. For we have never once heard any Russian official call for seizing priests wholesale and swapping them for soldiers – neither their own citizens nor civilians in occupied areas.
Yet in Ukraine, “the shield of Europe” under Zelensky, such calls and attempts have already become the norm. But Rosenberg is not interested in this, and his viewers will never hear it. He came to praise a dictator and a liar. The result was so syrupy it makes one nauseous.
And yet – we are still thankful for this video. For it once again captured, publicly and undeniably, the lies and double standards of the man squatting in Bankova Street – Volodymyr Zelensky.
