This article is taken from Gary mark’s podcast “Peace and Power”
Introduction
00:12 | See on YouTube
Gary: Welcome to Peace & Power Ukraine, a place to discuss all aspects of policy related to Ukraine. Ukraine sits at the crossroads of modern history, where freedom collides with totalitarianism and East meets West. All things are happening in Ukraine these days. I’m excited to bring back a returning guest for a great conversation live from Kyiv. We have Stephen Moore, founder of the Ukraine Freedom Project and executive producer of A Faith Under Siege, a film that tells the stories of Ukrainian Christians who have suffered the worst that Putin can throw at them and overcome through faith. Stephen came to Ukraine on day five of the war after a lifetime in Republican politics, which included seven years as a Chief of Staff in Congress. Today he lives in Kyiv and spends all day, every day, pushing back on Russian disinformation, getting first-hand data-driven information about Ukraine to American opinion leaders and policymakers. It’s great to have you back, Steve.
Stephen: Always great to be with you, my friend.
Day Five and the Full-Scale Invasion
01:19 | See on YouTube
Gary: We’re going to get into a lot of great things today, but first, I want our audience to understand what day five was like. Take us back to the beginning, and then we can trace some of that all the way to the current day battles. What took you to Ukraine on day five of the full-scale invasion?
Stephen: I have a lot of Ukrainian friends. I spent a year here in 2018 and 2019 and then joined an American artificial intelligence firm that had about 500 Ukrainian employees. I left my job on January 31st, 2022. As you do in these times of transition, you have a lot of reflective time. I was wondering whether I should go skiing in the Alps or the Rockies. While I was struggling with these issues, my Ukrainian friends started telling me things like: “They’re bombing Kyiv, I don’t know what to do.” This is my fifth war zone, sixth if you include Congress. I was in Iraq at the beginning of that war in 2003. When I heard these people needing help, I thought, “How much harder than Iraq could it be?” So, I jumped on a plane, flew into Bucharest, and took a car to the Romanian border with Ukraine. The line to get into Ukraine on that day was a lot shorter than the line to get out. Some of my Ukrainian friends picked me up at the border and we just started doing the work. At the time, we thought, like everyone else, that the Russians were going to roll through in three weeks. First, we tried to get people out of hotspots like Kyiv and Kharkiv. Then, as you might be surprised to learn, the international community and international organizations failed miserably. So, we started getting food and medicine to the front and places like Kyiv when it was surrounded on three sides by Russians, or Kharkiv when it was being bombed constantly. And then, I stayed.
Russian Birth Rate and Child Trafficking
04:38 | Guarda su YouTube
Gary: You’ve stayed, and the Ukraine Freedom Project was born out of that. It’s been doing amazing work pushing back on Russian disinformation. Just this week, you had a great op-ed in World, co-authored with our good friend Paul Teller. Tell us about that piece.
Stephen: Paul is such a great leader in the conservative community, it was an honor to co-author that piece with him. Here is what a lot of Americans don’t know. Everybody wonders why this war started. Putin has some nonsense about NATO expansion or saying these people are really Russians and he needs to rescue them. Let me tell you, no one in Ukraine thinks they’re Russian and nobody wants Putin to rescue them. What has happened is that the Russian birth rate has plummeted to a 200-year low, in part because of unrestricted abortion for decades. At one time, only about a third of Russian pregnancies ended in a live birth; two-thirds ended in abortion. Now it’s almost one out of every three, but that has really done a number on the Russian birth rate. Putin is kidnapping and trafficking Ukrainian children. Why is he doing that? Because the people dying in Ukraine are not ethnic Russians; they’re people from Bashkortostan, from Eastern Siberia, places we’ve never heard of and will never see. Meanwhile, he views Ukrainians as Russians, so he is kidnapping Ukrainian children to rebuild Russia’s population. The Ukrainian government has identified about 19,000 children they know have names and faces who have been kidnapped. Meanwhile, the Russians say they have as many as 730,000 Ukrainian children. It’s a really messed up thing.
Gary: That’s incredible. You’re the first person to really draw that clear of a line. Most of our American friends have begun to understand this tragedy, but maybe they didn’t understand the “why.” There have been many casualties on the Russian side that they have to replace, but they’ve also had a birth dearth. The most interesting part is that he views Ukrainians as Russians, so to him, that’s a worthy replacement.
Stephen: For him, it’s a great deal. You get rid of some undesirable ethnic minorities in Eastern Russia and you pick up a bunch of people he views as Russian. It’s about as dark as it can get.
Is Ukraine Winning?
10:18 | See on YouTube
Gary: You laid out a recent post called “Ukraine is Winning.” You said the Ukraine Freedom Project polled Republican primary voters in mid-October and found that only 11% thought Ukraine is winning. That’s easy to understand, as conservative influencers have long parted ways with the truth and are filling the conservative ecosphere with nonsense about Russia being a great power. Tell us about some of that myth-busting you’ve been doing.
Stephen: I’ve been to the Ukrainian front at least 50 times. We send non-lethal aid to Ukrainian soldiers, things like Starlinks and generators. What Americans are missing is that every time the Russians take a roadside gas station in Ukraine, the media blows it up as a major event. What the media does not tell you is that there is an enormous number of Russian casualties to take these things. Just this year, the Russians have lost 400,000 soldiers. They have taken an amount of land in Ukraine equal to about 37% of Palm Beach County, Florida. Yet, they have lost 400,000 soldiers just this year, and I think it’s up to about 1.3 million for the entire war. Nobody talks about the amazing toll that this is taking on Russia. Are you familiar with Operation Spiderweb? The Ukrainians smuggled 117 kamikaze drones into Russia, parked them in trucks next to five different airbases in five different time zones across Russia, released them all at the same time, and destroyed $7 billion worth of Russian aircraft. They’ve taken out a third of the Black Sea Fleet, and they don’t even have a navy. Russia has blown through two-thirds of its sovereign wealth fund. Nobody is reporting on the beating that Russia is taking.
Gary: When I saw this piece, I knew I had to have you back on. I’ve been asking people: “Is Ukraine winning?” Maybe the better way to phrase it is: “Is Russia losing?” To me, every day that Ukraine exists and there is free air to breathe in Ukraine is a loss for Putin and a defeat for his regime.
Russian Propaganda and Religious Freedom
17:13 | See on YouTube
Gary: Let’s dig into one of the chief proponents of Russian propaganda, bought and paid for by Russian sources: Robert Amsterdam. You’ve had some battles pushing back against his misinformation. It’s come out this week that in addition to being a voice for Putin’s goals, Amsterdam has also been on the payroll of Maduro’s regime and fronting for groups that are persecuting Christians in Nigeria. It’s like a rogue’s gallery of amazing patrons. What does that do for your work as you’re pushing back on disinformation?
Stephen: Robert Amsterdam is the attorney for supervillains; it’s like something out of a comic book. He’s never met a dictator he doesn’t like. Tucker Carlson has him on his show and pretends like he is struggling to keep Christians free. It’s not true at all. Amsterdam will tell you that Ukraine is persecuting Christians, which is nonsense. I live here; it’s quite literally not happening. But with every good propaganda, there’s a kernel of truth. The Russian Orthodox Church is a working arm of the Kremlin. Patriarch Kirill, the Russian Patriarch, has declared a holy war on Ukraine and the West. Now, there’s a branch of the Russian Orthodox Church inside Ukraine, and they are doing things like helping the Russian military target artillery, preaching surrender, and monitoring Ukrainian troop movements. These things get Ukrainian civilians killed. 85% of Ukrainians view that church as a national security threat. This church at one time had 60% or 70% of Ukrainians attending, but as it became more pro-Russian and the Russians became more aggressive toward Ukraine, it’s now down to 4%. Robert Amsterdam is defending a so-called church that is helping the Russian army kill Ukrainian civilians.
Life in Kyiv and the Global War
21:33 | See on YouTube
Gary: Help our audience understand what a normal night in Kyiv looks like. You’re seven hours ahead. Give us a perspective on what tonight might look like for you in the worst-case scenario.
Stephen: Kyiv is a highly functioning city; it’s actually hard to get a bad meal here. When I got to Kyiv three and a half years ago, it was surrounded on three sides by the Russians. Now, you have to drive 10 hours to find a Russian soldier. American weapons and Ukrainian bravery have done a lot to drive the Russians out. But what happens still is that Putin uses Iranian-made drones, called Shahed drones. Putin is cooperating with Iran, and China and North Korea are also in on the act, as well as hangers-on like Cuba and Venezuela. All these countries are working together against Ukraine, America, and Europe. These Iranian-made drones buzz by my window many nights; it sounds like a motorcycle in the sky. My blood pressure goes up when I hear it, and then when it goes over my head, the blood pressure goes down. On some nights, Putin will send hundreds of these drones into Kyiv to kill families and children. We have a mutual friend, Mark Sergeyev. Mark was chased out of his home in Melitopol by the Russians. He and his Christian friends moved into a neighborhood in Kyiv, and Putin sent a drone there and blew up their housing. Miraculously, no one died, but it looks like there should be a lot of dead Christians.
Gary: At this point, do you still go to the bomb shelter?
Stephen: If I went to the bomb shelter every time the alarms went off, I would get nothing done. I live in a house that has walls about three feet thick. I’m of the opinion that Putin’s not going to start World War III because he took out France’s embassy and killed half a dozen foreign service officers. The safest place you can be is wherever God wants you to be. God has put me in a position to tell the truth to other believers in the United States. Our movie, A Faith Under Siege, has been on CBN, TBN, Newsmax, and now on Angel Studios. I’ve got to put myself in harm’s way to get that message out, and I have a lot of faith in God.
Gary: Tell me about how Ukraine is going to survive this winter. I hear about this regularly and there are always these concerns.
Stephen: The Russians have really figured out some new tactics to take out the energy infrastructure here. In the first year, there were a lot of blackouts. We really haven’t had that many blackouts since then, but we had one earlier today. The unsung heroes of this are the energy workers who keep the lines open and the power stations repaired. We get probably half-and-half electricity, so you can warm your house and charge your stuff. Everybody here has an Ecoflow, these batteries about the size of a cooler. It’s rough, but it’s not as bad as you might think. This war could have been won by now if Joe Biden had let the Ukrainians use long-range weapons inside Russia. Tens of thousands of Ukrainians that would be alive today are not alive because of Joe Biden’s fear-forward foreign policy. Now, the Ukrainians are taking out this infrastructure and it’s working.
Christian Support for Ukraine
34:02 | See on YouTube
Stephen: The only thing I have “made in Russia” is this Russian officer’s hat that I traded for in Moscow in 1992. I traded an old Starter athletic hat for it. That’s all you need. I will tell you one more thing. Our poll shows that support for Ukraine among American Christians who attend church once a week has increased by 22% between June and today. You know why that is? It’s because of the work you and I do together, my friend.
Gary: I agree wholeheartedly, we have to keep it up. I’ll see if I can find a moment to get some coffee with you on this next trip.
Stephen: Love it, would look forward to that. Thanks, man.
Gary: And thank you for everyone listening to Peace & Power Ukraine. We’ll see you back here next time for another great conversation.
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