In episode 34 of his newest production, “Tucker on X,” host Tucker Carlson interviewed Canadian attorney Robert Amsterdam about the Ukrainian government’s repression of the ancient Ukrainian Orthodox Church.
Ep. 34 Of all of Biden’s crimes, backing the Ukrainian government as it throws priests in jail may be the most revealing. pic.twitter.com/ZCVV4uPzs9
— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) October 26, 2023
Kicking off the 10-minute episode, Carlson observed, “If you take three steps back, a lot of what’s happening around the world seems like an attack on Christianity…The Ukrainian government has now banned an entire Christian denomination and virtually no one in the United States has said anything about it.”
Amsterdam, who represents the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, explained the denomination and its current status.
“The Ukrainian Orthodox Church is the home of orthodoxy in Ukraine. It’s been around for a thousand years. Five years ago, the Ukrainian government, in its wisdom, set up what is called an autocephalous church – an independent church, independent of Russia, any connection to the Russian canons – and decided that that church should replace the spiritual home of Ukrainians,” Amsterdam explained.
“That church, called the OCU, has been engaged in an absolutely vicious, unlimited campaign to steal property, harass, intimidate, and jail clerics, force conscription on believers, act in a manner that is almost unbelievable in a civilized society,” Amsterdam continued. “And they’ll use the excuse that this church, which by the way completely separated from Moscow in May of last year, is somehow connected to the Russian FSB. But based on the testimonies I’ve reviewed, there seems to be little substance to this allegation. And in fact, there are other institutions in Ukraine, like the secret police, who have been far more infiltrated by Russia than this particular church.”
Amsterdam went on to explain the “sad reason” behind the banning of the denomination.
“The politicians in Ukraine, including perhaps the president, want to take the populist vote of those behind this new church and therefore feel it is in their political interest to destroy this ancient branch of Christianity,” Amsterdam said. “And I absolutely can tell you that the damage that has been visited on the leadership of this church, including five-year jail sentences for 75-year-old clerics, just astounds you that in the 21st century, a country that wants to join the EU would ban a religion, let alone an ancient Christian form of that religion.”
That’s when Carlson noted how U.S. taxpayers are essentially funding such banning of the denomination as it continues to fund the Ukrainian government and its military.
Later in the interview, Amsterdam added, “There is no basis under the Ukrainian constitution, or under international law, or under the laws of war, or Ukraine’s own resolution in terms of limited rights during the war for the banning of a religious denomination.”
As of press time, the latest installment of Carlson’s video podcast, posted at 4:59 p.m. Central Standard Time on Thursday, had over 19 million views. The 34 episodes posted by @TuckerCarlson have been seen nearly 3 billion times on Twitter / X.
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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Kaitlin on X / Twitter.
Photo “Tucker Carlson and Robert Amsterdam” by Tucker Carlson.
