Vice President Micheal Pence poses for his official portrait at The White House, in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, October 24, 2017. (Official White House Photo by D. Myles Cullen), public domain

Per Catholic Review last July, Vice President Pence demolishes Putin propagandist Tucker Carlson’s claims of religious persecution of Christians by Ukrainian authorities.  Excerpt:

Former Vice President Mike Pence had a tense exchange with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson July 14 at an Iowa candidate forum about the war in Ukraine, shedding light on both how Republican presidential candidates are navigating increasingly conflicted views on the subject among their base, but also an oft-repeated disinformation tactic by Russian propagandists.

…

“You are distressed the Ukrainians don’t have enough American tanks, every city in the United States has become much worse in the last three years,” Carlson said, adding, “Where’s the concern for the United States in that?”

Pence characterized that argument as a false equivalence.

“Anybody that says we can’t be the leader of the free world and solve our problems at home has a pretty small view of the greatest nation on Eearth,” Pence argued. “We can do both.”

…

… Carlson continued to push Pence on Ukraine, arguing that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is “persecuting Christians.”

Zelenskyy’s government has taken steps to restrict Moscow-affiliated Orthodox churches under the influence of the Russian government as it seeks to fend off that country’s invasion, a distinction Pence argued was an important one.

“I asked the Christian leader in Kyiv if that was happening, and he assured me it was not –people were not being persecuted for their religious beliefs,” Pence said, adding that “he assured me that the Zelenskyy government was protecting religious liberty” in Ukraine while combating “small elements” of a Russian Orthodox Church run by the Kremlin.

Carlson asked “how a Christian leader could support the arrest of Christians” for “differing views.”

Pence said that is not what is happening in Ukraine.

Interviews on the ground in Ukraine by OSV News paint a picture opposed to Carlson’s version of events.

The Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine (under the Moscow Patriarchate) “is not just under the control of the government, but they are part of the government,” Archbishop Yevstratiy Zorya, deputy head of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine’s Department of External Church Relations, told OSV News June 28, 2023. Archbishop Zorya, a professor at the Kyiv Orthodox Theological Academy, was interviewed at his offices adjacent to St. Michael’s Golden-Domed Monastery in Kyiv.

“The current leader of the patriarchate, Gundyayev Patriarch Kirill — they are more officials of the Kremlin regime than real Christian leaders,” he said. Vladimir Mikhailovich Gundyayev is the secular name of Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill, who is reported to have worked with the Soviet Union’s KGB intelligence service, particularly with respect to the World Council of Churches in Switzerland during the 1970s.

 

Glory to Ukraine!