“Vadym Novynskyi is a Ukrainian businessman, priest and former politician of Armenian descent. He is the owner of the Ukrainian Smart Holding Group with an estimated net worth of $1.9 billion in March 2013. He is also a protodeacon as part of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.” Wikipedia. Courtesy of Wikimeda Commons, Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication.

The Washington Post reports on a high-powered propaganda war between lobbyists commissioned by a Russian Oligarch and Kyiv over religious liberty.  Excerpt:

Novinsky made his fortune in the oil trade in St. Petersburg in the 1990s, together with a close associate of Putin’s. He later expanded his business into Ukraine, becoming a citizen of that country and a prominent supporter of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. He was often seen alongside Kirill, the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church, during the patriarch’s official visits to Ukraine and during Novinsky’s visits to Russia, reports and photographs show. Amsterdam said …

To lead the campaign on Capitol Hill, Amsterdam hired the law firm of Nelson Mullins and its senior policy adviser Ron Klink, a former Pennsylvania congressman, according to filings under the Lobbying Disclosure Act and emails to congressional staffers seen by The Post, and William Burke-White, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania and former adviser to the State Department during the Obama administration….

Amsterdam initially said his firm did not register its work under FARA because of an exemption in the law for representation of religious organizations. One lawyer specializing in FARA law said the exemption extended only to purely religious activities.

“The exemption generally does not apply unless your activities are purely religious and do not also involve what the law calls political activities. The definition of political activity includes any attempt to influence the U.S. government with reference to U.S. policy or to influence any segment of the U.S. public with reference to the public or political interests of any foreign nation,” said Joshua Ian Rosenstein, a partner at the Sandler Reiff law firm, which specializes in FARA and other lobbying-registration questions. “I think they would have an uphill battle demonstrating it is purely religious and nonpolitical as defined by the law.”

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Ukraine, in the meantime, has been ramping up its efforts to court American Christians, with Kyiv Global Outreach, a nonprofit organization affiliated with the Kyiv School of Economics, hiring the Washington PR firm DCI Group and contracting it to spend $3.6 million on outreach throughout 2024, FARA filings show. Gary Marx, a prominent evangelical and Republican strategist who was hired by DCI, has dispatched Ukrainian evangelicals to present their case across the United States, speaking at the Republican National Convention, the National Association of Christian Lawmakers and the Southern Baptist Convention.

Glory to Ukraine!