Washington, D.C., December 23, 2025
Razom for Ukraine associate director of public engagement Julian Hayda. Photo: Facebook
A Ukrainian lobbyist stated on a recent phone call that Ukraine’s Armed Forces have destroyed numerous Ukrainian Orthodox Church buildings and used them as military staging areas, according to a recording leaked to the Union of Orthodox Journalists.
The statement came during an emergency conference call organized by the American Coalition for Ukraine on Wednesday night, where participants discussed religious freedom as their “Achilles heel” in lobbying efforts.
Julian Hayda, associate director of public engagement for Razom for Ukraine, a coalition member organization, cautioned fellow lobbyists about selecting images for their advocacy materials. “Visuals also matter. We have to be careful with the images that we use, because a lot of … the UOC churches in Ukraine that were destroyed … were destroyed by Ukrainian Armed Forces. We would use them as staging areas—that’s very not good. We have to be careful about the images that we use,” Hayda stated during the call.
Imagery shared by Hayda on social media
Hayda, who studied at the Ukrainian Greek Catholic seminary in Kiev and is the son of a Uniate priest, also commented on the effectiveness of recent advocacy efforts by the Society of St. John of Shanghai and San Francisco, noting that its Day of Action on December 16 succeeded in part because the participants “were visibly Orthodox on Capitol Hill.”
“It meant they appeared not to be Russian—there was not a single Russian flag—and they appeared to be just a poor, persecuted, American, homegrown religious group,” he said.
Hayda failed to explain that the Society of St. John’s delegation did not “appear to be Russian” because it, in fact, consisted of Orthodox Christians of various ethnicities and jurisdictions united in supporting the persecuted Ukrainian Orthodox Church, rather than advocating for Russian interests, as anti-UOC propagandists claim.
Listen to the audio at the Union of Orthodox Journalists.
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