Pence pushes back on false claims about Ukraine’s religious freedom at GOP forum

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.

In pushing Pence on Ukraine, Carlson at one point argued that Christians were being persecuted and denied their religious freedom under that country’s president.

At a conference hosted by the Family Leadership Summit, a prominent and influential evangelical group in a state home to the first contest in the presidential nomination process, Carlson — who was fired from his perch at Fox News in the aftermath of that company’s $787.5 million defamation settlement with Dominion Voting Systems concerning the network’s false claims covering the 2020 election — argued against providing U.S. support to Ukraine to fend off Russia’s invasion, sparring with Pence, who supports providing such aid.

During an onstage interview with Pence, the former vice president discussed his own recent visit to Ukraine, and argued the Biden administration failed to provide Ukraine with the weaponry it needed promptly enough.

“I believe that it is in the interests of the United States of America to continue to give the Ukrainian military the resources they need to repel the Russian invasion and restore their sovereignty,” Pence said.

Carlson, a vocal critic of U.S. support for Ukraine, argued the funds spent on aid to Ukraine should have been spent to reduce domestic crime.

“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.”

The U.S. has provided Ukraine billions of dollars in military aid and other financial support since Russia began its full-scale invasion in February 2022. Although about half of Americans support the amount of aid given to Ukraine by the U.S., according to data from the Pew Research Center, a growing segment of Republicans say the U.S. is providing too much aid. This marks something of a departure from the party’s traditional hawkish stance on protecting U.S. interests abroad, and creates a complex environment for Republican presidential candidates to discuss the issue with Republican primary voters.

But 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.

“Just as Islamic State instrumentalizes the religion of Islam, Russian ideology is instrumentalizing Christianity,” Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk, head of the worldwide Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, told OSV News in a June 29, 2023, interview at his offices at the Patriarchal Cathedral of the Resurrection of Christ in Kyiv. Under the Soviets, the UGCC was brutally persecuted and driven underground until 1989.

“We have the same development in the military theology of the Russian Orthodox Church, which says, ‘We are the last authentic Christians; everybody else is in heresy,'” Major Archbishop Shevchuk said. “‘We are the protectors of authentic, traditional Christian values. The collective West is the embodiment of the Antichrist. They are attacking us. We have to fight the metaphysical war.’ And what is the reward for Russian soldiers? Forgiveness of all their sins and life everlasting.”

“That insidious doctrine is invading Christianity in U.S.,” he continued. “It is not only an issue for Ukraine, and it stands to undermine the credibility of the Gospel of Jesus Christ for future generations. The children of those who accept such an ideology will one day ask what you were doing when Russian ideology was killing — how you went through this war which happened in Ukraine, but affected the whole world.”

The Ukraine’s Institute for Religious Freedom said in April that as a result of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, at least 494 religious buildings, theological institutions, and sacred places “were wholly destroyed, damaged, or looted” by the Russian military as of Jan. 31, 2023.

In remarks to The New York Times following his exchange with Carlson, Pence expressed regret the pair “didn’t have very much time during my time onstage to talk about the progress for life or issues impacting the family.” Despite Carlosn’s focus on Ukraine, Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds signed a law prohibiting elective abortions at six weeks at the conference.

“I’m really never surprised by Tucker Carlson,” Pence added.

Prior to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Putin’s regime has faced international condemnation for its repression of religious freedom. In 2016, the Russian Federation enacted the Yarovaya Law, designed to repress generalized dissent and severely restrict the activities of religious groups, especially smaller denominations. Evangelical Christians and Jehovah’s Witnesses in particular have been targeted under this law, according to the U.S. Department of State.

That department’s Office of International Religious Freedom noted in its 2020 annual “Report on International Religious Freedom” the Secretary of State had “again placed Russia on the Special Watch List for having engaged in or tolerated severe violations of religious freedom.”

OSV News reporter Gina Christian contributed to this article.

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