News Outlets Bury US Christian Nationalist Role In Ukraine

Readers of mainstream news may have learned after the fact about the role Christian evangelicals played in passing arms funding for Ukraine, but the reports they saw uniformly omitted a crucial aspect: The plan to shape Ukraine as a bulwark against LGBTQ+ and reproductive rights.

Instead, sites ranging from Voice of America to the Washington Post described the efforts by Ukrainian evangelicals with no mention of their allies, backers, records or rhetoric. None of these reports included how the Ukrainians pitched their country to U.S. evangelicals: As a European “Bible belt” that Christians can shape, creating “an army of Jesus.”

I first reported on April 10 that Pavlo Unguryan, a Ukrainian evangelical in the U.S. prayer breakfast movement, was conducting shadow diplomacy with both House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. One week later, Johnson announced he would allow a vote on the funding, even if it cost him the speakership.

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