U.S.A., November 10, 2025
Photo: Tucker Carlson
International human rights attorney Robert Amsterdam returned to Tucker Carlson’s program last week to discuss the ongoing persecution of the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church, describing a situation that has escalated from harassment to systematic torture under President Zelensky’s government.
The attorney has spoken with Carlson several times, most recently in February of this year.
Amsterdam, who has represented the UOC pro bono for several years, painted a stark picture of the Church’s current situation. “When you say persecution, that doesn’t sum it up,” Amsterdam told Carlson. “I’m talking about torture. I’m talking about the theft of churches.”
The attorney detailed specific cases of clerical abuse, including that of His Eminence Metropolitan Arseny of Svyatogorsk, who has been imprisoned for a year and a half despite having no stomach and being “horribly ill.” Amsterdam described how after 17 months, authorities briefly released the elderly bishop only to have secret police arrest him again on trumped up charges that he didn’t resist the Russian invasion.
Amsterdam also spoke about a former Ukrainian Member of Parliament who fled the country after speaking out against legislation banning the UOC. This legislation, Amsterdam explained, has “no comparison in Europe since the Nuremberg Laws.” The former MP, who had his security pulled after denouncing the bill, fled on foot through a forest and made it to the UK, where Ukrainian authorities immediately sought his extradition.
Perhaps most striking was Amsterdam’s criticism of American Christian leaders’ silence on the issue. When asked about the Evangelical response, Amsterdam noted that while J.D. Vance gave a statement supporting the Church when he was a senator, virtually no other major American Christian figures have spoken out. “I am in shock at the silence of the media in the United States and the silence of the Christian community to what’s happened,” Amsterdam said.
The attorney described Ukraine under Zelensky as “a one-party, one-person, autocratic state that has no comparison to any democratic values” and noted that “the man in charge of religious affairs wrote an anti-Jewish screed 20 years ago.” Remarkably, Amsterdam revealed that this official, Yelensky, was a keynote speaker at a Religious Freedom Conference held in Washington, D.C., where Ukrainian government representatives hosted a “happy hour” with men in Ukrainian army uniforms walking around.
Amsterdam expressed particular frustration that the canonical UOC—the largest Church in Ukraine—is ignored, while the state-backed Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU) receives prominent support. He described the OCU as “essentially a cutout of the presidential administration.”
When asked why American media and religious leaders have remained silent, Amsterdam suggested that “Christianity has been subsumed by the State Department” and that “the U.S. government decides what Christians we support and what Christians we don’t.”
The attorney also revealed that he is currently under criminal investigation in Ukraine and cannot safely return to the country, despite representing Ukrainian clients. “I have no idea if I go, if I’ll get out,” he said.
Amsterdam concluded by noting that members of the UOC are fighting and dying for Ukraine in the war against Russia. He shared that one young soldier who appeared in a video asking President Zelensky how he could be expected to fight when he couldn’t defend his own church in his town has since died in combat.
Watch the entire segment with Robert Amsterdam, beginning at 30:30:
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