On Zelensky, Putin, UOC and OCU: Amsterdam's interview with Tucker Carlson

Amsterdam and Carlson criticized Zelensky for persecuting the UOC. Photo: UOJ

On February 19, 2025, an interview with international UOC attorney Robert Amsterdam was published on the YouTube channel of well-known American journalist and public figure Tucker Carlson.

We present to you the full, uncensored translation of the interview.

- So thank you for doing this. You're one of the few people who at the end of our last conversation, I thought "I want to talk to that man again" because you're one of the few people I know who has a real sense of what it's like in Ukraine and has been for the last three years since the war began. How would you summarize the situation in Ukraine right now?

- Dire. Dire. The situation is dire. Zelensky is wildly unpopular. There are press gangs to take people to the front. People are without hope, the casualties are enormous, and the corruption is enormous. And imagine sending your child to the front knowing all of this.

As you know, I represent the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. So our parishioners go to the front, while their churches are being stolen back home, while parishioners, elderly parishioners and priests are being beaten. And you know what I’ve always said to people who defend Zelensky is, you know, all his numbers are complete fabrications. If he was popular, if he was trusted, he wouldn’t have destroyed the press. He wouldn’t be jailing and labeling with treason charges political opponents. And there would have been some control on the corruption. I mean, the courts are impossible. It’s a police state. The SBU, the secret police run and intimidate everyone and everything.

And yet the Western press has blockaded this story. The dishonesty of some of the people that are reporting from Ukraine is astounding. I’ve never seen anything like it. I’ve been involved with cases involving wars and disputes, but the absolute lying and the games that our papers are playing, the Wall Street Journal, for instance, barely has an op-ed that doesn’t laud Zelensky. You never get reality about what’s actually going on in the presidential administration. You get no coverage.

You know, there’s a law, 3894, to destroy the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. No law has been passed like this in Europe since World War II against the Jews. There’s no coverage. The argument when I say to the press, how can you do this? How can you not cover people talking about religious cleansing who are members of the Ukrainian parliament? How can you not cover it? They say, well, this church is somehow a Russian thing. We, you know, as I’ve told you, we have reached a point where this narrative, the Zelensky narrative has been accepted and our people simply don’t challenge it. They fall, they fall to it and it’s really been down to the new administration to put a pin in that balloon.

- It’s kind of hard to skip over you and your role in all this. I think you’re the only American attorney who’s worked in Ukraine who I have seen was telling the truth about what’s actually happening there. And for doing that, you’ve been called a Russian stooge, a Putin worshiper. Your character has been impugned. Can you just take a couple of minutes, tell us who you are? Why are you representing the Orthodox Church in Ukraine? Are you a Putin puppet?

- Look, for 45 years, I’ve done political cases all over the world. We’ve taken on some big enemies. We took on the United Nations pro bono on behalf of an individual worker for the UN that they had destroyed. We got two assistant secretaries general disciplined in that case that made history inside the UN. And we were awarded the global pro bono award from American lawyer for doing that case. I represented political opponents of Putin in Moscow. I was arrested in Moscow at 2 a.m. and they tried to load me into a vehicle, get me out of there. I wouldn’t go.

- I just want to be clear on this. You were arrested by the Putin government at 2 a.m. in Moscow.

- That’s right. In 2005, defending a political opponent to Vladimir Putin. And in fact, have been banned from Russia ever since. I hold no water for Putin. I represent opponents of the Russian government in various countries, continue to represent political opponents of Putin. It hasn’t stopped the Ukrainians from launching a massive disinformation campaign against me because of my defense of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which is the majority church of Ukraine, which Zelensky and his gang have been trying to destroy.

I am on the legal team of some of the priests that they have illegally jailed. We have an individual in London who fled the country because Zelensky had literally set people to basically, I don’t want to use the word "liquidate" him, but he had to virtually run across a border. This is a member of the Rada who Yermak took away his security. He had to run across the border to save his life, and his crime was speaking out against a law to destroy his Church.

- Can we just back up for one second? So you’re a, I think it’s fair to say, in broadest terms, a Jewish liberal from the Bronx who was arrested by Putin. How did you wind up representing the Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine? Why was that important? Of all the cases you could take, why that one?

- Well, let’s be clear. It’s the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. We are not part of the ROC. We are, we share only a canonical link. Our Church denounced the invasion. Our church separated itself administratively 30 years ago, and every Ukrainian that’s Orthodox has been baptized in our church.

Five years ago, a new church was established in Ukraine by the Poroshenko administration with the active connivance of the United States government. The State Department of the United States was involved in the establishment of the church. I believe either USAID or some other organizations have funded this state church called the OCU. This is a basically kind of a CIA operation, if you will, to set up a church that would be completely free of what they viewed as the dangerous Putin influence. So you have our State Department violating our constitution openly, engaging in the destruction of religious freedom in a foreign country, doing things absolutely illegal under our constitution.

- Like establishing religion.

- Yes, all in the name of anti-Putin activities. And because I am so very strongly against the present Russian administration, I insisted on traveling to Kyiv with a bunch of my lawyers to interview. We were privileged to meet with the Holy Synod, to meet with senior members of the church, interview priests, interview lawyers, so I could fully accept the mandate to fight for a church that was being driven out of existence.

This is something that’s not supposed to happen in the 21st century. And as a Jew who feels strongly about freedoms from my Christian brothers and sisters, as somebody who feels that religious freedom is the foundation of all our freedoms.

- Yes.

And I believe that to the center of my being, I could not believe that the American government, a government for which I signed up for the draft on my birthday when I was 18, when we were still in Vietnam, this government could be funding the destruction of this Church. So we’ve studied it. We’ve met with people who were at high levels of the U.S. government, who confirmed for me that this was a U.S. government operation. And we have done everything we can. And we have walked into a wall of Ukrainian propaganda inside Washington.

I want to be very clear. I just finished speaking at a religious freedom conference. It was a religious freedom conference that in many ways was managed by the Ukrainian government. It was Ukraine—

- In Washington.

In Washington, D.C. My team was barely afforded an allowance to go in. We were not allowed in a year ago. This time we were allowed in. They wouldn’t take our money.

- Well, you’re defending a church against a dictator, but you’re not allowed to appear at a religious freedom conference.

- That's correct.

And this time, when I went to the religious freedom conference, I was only allowed, they stacked the panel I was on with a priest from the other church.

And they gave me basically five minutes to present my views, which were that, in fact, this other church, which, by the way, has stolen 1,500 of our churches, engaged in mobilizing—

- Stolen the buildings?

- Yes. Stolen them. Outright stolen them. And worse, beaten our priests, beaten our parishioners. And I have this all on video. If you go to savetheuoc.com, you will see the videos of our parishioners being beaten. These are the elderly parents of people at the front fighting for the liberation and protection of Ukraine, being beaten very often by SBU, that's their secret police, wearing death masks with Nazi insignias on their arm.

And let me be very clear to you that you will never hear elsewhere: there is a massive right-wing movement in Ukraine that has tremendous influence. Our newspapers were warning of this in the late teens. And once the war started, we never heard anything else. It's as if all these neo-Nazis disappeared.

They haven't disappeared. They're part of the Ukrainian government.

But you're never allowed to say that because if you say anything like that, you are told that you are a Putinist.

And Kasparov has summed it up. He's basically said, if you criticize Zelensky in any way, you're a Putinist.

So the fact that he's destroyed civil society, he's destroyed a free media, he jails or sanctions or charges with treason his opponents. We're supposed to ignore all of that because if we mention it or if I stand on a soapbox to scream that he's jailing and torturing priests... We are somehow disentitled to speak.

We have this crazy adopted authoritarianism now where we as a country of institutions have made a king out of Zelensky.

We have allowed him to destroy every Ukrainian institution out there that's independent. And we've turned him into a king or demigod.

And I will tell you that one of the instruments that was being used to attack me, for instance, was FARA.

- The Foreign Agent Registration Act.

- That's right.

A journalist in the Washington Post who we offered to interview all sorts of beaten priests instead focused on me, tried to make it sound like I was in Putin's pay and somehow violated FARA, when I knew very well I had an exemption because I represent the Church.

It's been crazy.

I’ve gone into meetings, firstly, most Democrats, almost all Democrats, but a few, including Dick Durbin, who gave us a very respectful hearing. Almost all Democrats wouldn’t meet with us, which really shocks me, because I’ve been a lawyer for 45 years. I generally get meetings when I need them. None.

Republicans, on the other hand, often their staff at least, were willing to meet with us. One senator had the courage to stand up and speak out, and that man, God bless him, is now the Vice President of the United States. He was the only one.

- JD Vance was the only one?

- The only one. Absolutely. And he will forever be in his debt because he took the destruction of Christ’s children seriously enough to raise it, and he was outraged that our government was allowing it. He didn’t even go so far. I don’t think he understood that we were in fact funding and supporting it.

And there is a guy in the Ukrainian government, a Mr. Yelensky, not Zelensky, Yelensky, who’s been in charge of the destruction of this Church for years. His lifeblood is to destroy this Church. He helps, I’m sure he directs the SBU to jail these priests I work with. Guess who it is? Yelensky is. Yelensky with a Y, and he’s written some very interesting books. I don’t want to get into that.

- About what?

- Just nothing. Everything you can think of against religious freedom. He has written about when it was the Soviet Union.

- Really?

- Well, he wrote a book about Zionism and clericalism. This is the guy that is heading up their department of religion, essentially, and freedom. This guy was honored and given an honored position at the Religious Freedom Conference in Washington.

- Wait, the persecutor of the Orthodox Church was given a position of prominence at a Religious Freedom Conference?!

- You have that right. What conference was I mean the sound? This is the one that was in Washington, a huge conference that went right before the Prayer Breakfast in Washington.

- Did anyone say anything other than you?

- No. No. Because nobody, the only thing they were worried about, I got a call.

- What about all the Christians?

- They’re silent. I got a call.

- Why is it left to you? I mean, this is the point where I feel like pulling my hair out.

- Well, I tell you.

- Why is this your job? Well, and let me tell you. What about Mike Johnson and all these other Christians in the Congress are always talking about how Christian they are?

- Well, I can tell you that because of the smear, and we understand that the Ukrainians gave a $3.6 million contract to a PR firm in Washington to go after my church and me. So I’ve had vicious letters written about me all over the place talking about me as a Russian agent.

- You who were arrested by Putin.

- We have the Hudson Institute, a reputable institute, hosting an event, taking the Ukrainian line. We wanted to get a voice that was about religion in Ukraine. We weren’t allowed to join the Hudson Institute.

- Hudson Institute?

- We weren’t allowed to join the Hudson Institute. Because I think the Ukrainian propaganda machine are indirectly sponsoring these things. And what they’re doing is they’re running shows and movies about Russian activities, anti-evangelical activities in the Donbas, which I believe are happening and which I completely support.

You know, there is no one more than me who will support evangelicals or anyone else who are being oppressed. But to sponsor this type of activity and not mention our church is a scandal. To avoid mentioning the majority Church of Ukrainians and never say a word about Law 3894 that destroys our Church. We will not have the Church in six months...

- Do you know who at the State Department worked on this op to create a fake church?

- Yes, yes. It dates back to 2014. We believe it began with Victoria Nuland, who, I mean, this was a big operation because she worked with the ambassador of the United States to Ukraine. Amazingly, becomes the ambassador of the United States to Greece. And it is in fact the Patriarch of the Constantinople Church that becomes the one who engineers the basically the destruction of our church by taking canonical control away from Moscow and taking it to himself, violating a treaty from the 17th century.

So we have the United States, and by the way, this was engineered by Secretary of State Pompeo. So this isn’t just a Democrat thing. Secretary of State Pompeo was directly involved.

- Well, the difference between Victoria Nuland and Mike Pompeo is negligible. There’s no difference at all that I’m aware of. He may be slightly smarter, he’s smarter than she is, and they’re far more sinister, but they have the same views on everything.

- Well, in any event, Pompeo was involved in basically having this what’s called in religious terms a Tomos granted so that Ukraine could establish an autocephalous church. This is in 2019. So the church that is allegedly now a clean church away from Russia is five years old. And that church, which we believe is partially US funded, has engaged in a vicious campaign of harassment, intimidation, coordination with secret police to steal churches, to disrupt events, to break priests.

I mean, you have to understand, I have met tortured priests. I have met priests. One priest I met the day after his meeting with me had a heart attack during an interrogation by the SBU. I mean, just try to imagine that.

- Well, US tax dollars are paying for the torture of priests. I mean, that’s the problem.

- Yeah. And I mean, for those who say this is not true, please call Mr. Dmytruk, who is now, thank God, in safety in London, and who is a former member of the Rada, who will be saying in open court, because he’s now fighting bogus extradition charges, he will be outlining all of this in open court about what’s happened to him. And he is just a microcosm of what’s happened in Ukraine. And it is the ongoing treason charges.

As you know, as I’ve said, I’m now exposed to a criminal investigation in Ukraine, something that even Putin didn’t do to me. Zelensky is doing to me because I’m defending a Church. In Putin’s case, I’m defending opponents of Putin. But in Zelensky’s case, I’m defending a Church. And they’ve opened up a criminal investigation.

- Would you be able to go to Ukraine right now?

- No, I think the whole reason is to ensure that I don’t spend time with my clients.

- There’s also the question of violence, which everyone ignores. They’ve committed violence against the Church that you represent. They’ve also committed a lot of violence. A lot of people have been killed. Noncombatants have been killed by the Zelensky government. And people I know have been targeted for assassination, including a head of state in Europe. And so I don’t know why that doesn’t get any coverage. You’re an American citizen. You’re an attorney. You have clients in Ukraine. It’s our client state. And yet you would be afraid to go there?

- Let me take a step further. With all of the farthest stuff that went on, and with the Washington Post publishing all this stuff, and with Mr. Zelensky almost literally demanding compliance from the United States under the Democrats, I was hesitating to come home. I mean, the Ukrainians had such a lock on Washington. It is unbelievable. And the Ukrainian Rada demanded that U.S. authorities investigate me because I wrote a letter to the Rada, an open and public letter, saying to every member of the Rada, "If you pass a bill that destroys the Church, you could be individually subject to sanctions."

That is completely within my rights as an American citizen to inform a foreign legislator who is engaged in essentially criminal activities that they need to return to religious freedom. Should not be controversial. And it is on this basis that the Ukrainians were begging our own authorities to get involved.

- How did the Ukrainians, so I mean, 15 years ago, my whole life, Ukraine, you know, it’s the largest country and the most corrupt country in Europe. It was an afterthought. Lots of wheat has grown there, very pretty women, but it’s Ukraine. It’s not central to anybody’s geo-strategy. And all of a sudden you wake up and the Ukrainians seem to be in charge of the U.S. government. How did that happen?

- Look, I’m going to be speaking about this on Friday. I think that you have to go back to the Mueller investigation. I think you have to go back to the Russia scare. And I think that a tremendous amount of partisan politics was played out involving Russia. And it instilled a tremendous amount of fear in the United States. And the Ukrainians have developed the most sophisticated propaganda and information campaign I’ve ever seen. I have never seen any country engage in this level of competent, highly sophisticated disinformation that, by the way, they accuse the Russians of. There is no day of the week the Russians have been 10% as effective as the Ukrainians.

- I will say knowing the Russians very smart, lead the world in chess and engineering, but they’re just embarrassing on the propaganda question. They’re bad. They’re bad. Embarrassing.

- They are. They’re bad.

- I mean, t’s just a fact. They’re not good at that stuff at all.

- No. And, you know, I fought them and we were quite successful at exposing the false charges against some leading Russian businessmen. So I’ve seen them in action, but I’ve never seen anything as effective at developing the American narrative as the Ukrainian narrative in the United States, exerting huge levels of control over media.

I mean, we had an interview with The Guardian three days or four days after I got back. Very, very, very competent reporter took down notes, was in shock at what happened. The Guardian never published the story. This is The Guardian who will publish anything about anybody involving human rights. They wouldn’t publish the story because it went against... there’re two obstacles. One – it goes against the Russian narrative. And two – all of the guys on the ground for the Western press sell books on Ukraine. And I do wonder if there’s a commercial motive in the reporting. Because if you look, and some of these guys are my friends, but I got to wonder if you look at it, no wonder they’re notoriously blind to what’s going on.

- Well, there’s some kind of unspoken motive here because none of this makes any sense. I mean, Ukraine is so far outside of our orbit, Ukraine, it’s not one of those countries I thought had any influence over American foreign policy or public discourse at all. And all of a sudden, you can’t even say an obvious truth about the country or you get in trouble or in my case, you get fired or whatever. What is that actually about? What are the deeper interests here? Do you have any clue? Look, as I said, no other country could do that, no matter how sophisticated the propaganda is or almost no other.

- Look, I have said to myself, because I’ve done many, many controversial cases in my career, nothing’s ever approached this in terms of the blowback. When you say to somebody like all of these people today that are speaking out about the President’s statement about 4%, and they’re saying, oh, that’s crap, it’s 60%.

- Right, the President said that Zelensky had an approval rating of 4%.

- Right. So I say to myself – Mr. Zelensky can’t argue the numbers because he is in a police state, he has no media, he has no opponents, he just cited for treason two or three of the most important people in Ukraine, including his predecessor, Poroshenko. He’s done everything he can to mobilize forces to destroy any hope of freedom or opposition. He hasn’t held an election. He is, in fact, under their constitution out of time. He should be out of office. He has no constitutional mandate. Well, he’s the definition of a dictator. He’s an unelected, strong man who’s eliminated his opposition. I mean, and he’s trying to argue about how popular he is. Well, I’m sorry. There’s this old expression, 'Res ipsa loquitur' – 'it speaks for itself.' I mean, if you’re popular, you don’t ban the press and jail your opponents.

- It seems to me, having used the drug myself many years ago, he seems like he’s on cocaine to me.

- I don’t know that. I have no evidence of it. I hear a lot of people say that.

- Have you heard that?

- I’ve heard it.

- A lot or just in passing?

- Oh, no. I’ve heard a lot, but I have no, I can’t say it. I have no evidence.

- I don’t either. I hear it a lot, including from people in Europe who know him. Again, no. But is that widely believed in Ukraine, do you know?

- I believe it is. But again, I hesitate. I don’t like ad hominem comments.

- No, no, no. But you look at the guy and you’re like, "There’s something wrong."

- Except what’s wrong is the resonance seems to have with everybody in Europe. I mean, if you look at Germany, for instance – and this is another subject that as a lawyer who cares about freedom drives me crazy, which is sanctions.

The Ukrainians not only have engaged in this massive propaganda campaign to dehumanize Russia. Now, that’s different than saying Russia engaged in aggressive war, which I agree with. That’s different. They have gone to the next level and tried to make it appear as if peace is somehow a crime, that you cannot make peace with these people.

- Because the Russians are subhuman.

- Exactly. But hold on. It gets worse.

- That’s like full Nazi propaganda. No one’s subhuman, wrong human.

- But it gets worse because our government under Biden has led the world in an insane sanctioning campaign. Insane because it is contrary to American interests.

- Exactly.

- What have we done? Number one, we have consolidated Putin’s power. The people who were opposed to Putin in London and other places have had to go back to Moscow because their currency is not working, their kids can’t go to school. Again, we have the subhuman thing. Number two, we have consolidated the relationship between Russia and China. The very thing that Richard Nixon worked very hard never to do, we have done. We’ve absolutely built up the economies of all sorts of transit countries that don’t help us at all by having these phony economies come up.

- So you’re referring to Russian energy shipments. So Russia has a ton of energy. The world needs a ton of energy. But these sanctions make it impossible to conduct straightforward business. So they’re going through what you call transit companies and countries and they’re doing all kinds of subterfuge to cloak this but everyone knows it’s happening. This we’re referring to?

- Exactly. And we are making India very great today by their engaging in this arbitrage. We’re consolidating Xi Jinping’s power. We are working to empower him against Taiwan. We are doing everything not in America’s interest.

- So who’s the we here? Who’s doing this? Like honestly, what is this? Because it was obvious to me the day Russia invaded, which I didn’t think would happen and I was opposed to, of course. But the first day this happened, I thought they’re going to get rid of the US dollars, the world’s reserve currency. That’s exactly what this is. All of this seems like an attack on the West to me. Well, who is behind this? Do you have any idea?

- Look, you know, I can only tell you that if you if you study sanctions, there are very few people ever who have said they work. What sanctions are, it’s a very cheap way for governments who are not very effective to tell their populace’s we’re doing something. But what it does is—

- I think Fidel Castro died in his bed.

- Yeah, exactly. What it does is it empowers the most corrupt all over the world. We are empowering Ukrainian corruption. We are empowering the corruption of our business interests. We are doing everything to disestablish America’s position. We are giving Putin the armament to get away from the dollar. We’re doing everything for them to establish alternative payment systems. We are building our opponents with a sanctioned system that violates the rule of law that denies people, their human rights. Very often, some of the most industrious people going. It is the most counterproductive system we’ve put in place.

And yet everybody’s going crazy that Elon Musk is trying to engage and I’ll admit pretty unique efforts to reduce the budget deficit. But nobody’s talking about how our government is propagating. In my view, there are these absolutely violative sanctions all over the world that are totally destroying our rule of law and America as a safe haven for those opposed to people like Putin.

- Sanctioning people’s children who didn’t do anything wrong. Why would US policymakers be, why would Victoria Nuland want that? I mean, it just seems cruel and awful.

- Let me tell you, I’m dealing with a case in Switzerland. The Swiss are worse than the Americans.

- Oh, I know.

- Because they are so scared of the United States enforcement that we literally are defending children who are being attacked by the Swiss. So the whole sanction situation, this whole dehumanizing of people with Russian names that no one is speaking out against because we’re all afraid. We’re all in this, I call it the authoritarianism of the left that we are all subject to. This woke-ism, authoritarianism, this unwillingness to give the opponent a voice.

- But I thought that, I mean, I thought this was the key indelible lesson of the 1940s, that when governments decide that some people don’t have human rights because of their genetic makeup, it winds up with mass murder and it’s bad for everybody. And so we’re never doing that again. We’re never going to allow any demagogue or group of demagogues to say, "That group right there is not entitled to human rights and we’re going to hurt them." I thought that was the lesson. I’m 55. I grew up in a country... Remember that?

- Let me tell you something. This law in Ukraine, law 3894, is one of the most dangerous pieces of legislation I've ever seen. And it's not alone. In Estonia, they're attempting to destroy the Russian Orthodox Church. These Baltic countries that are bulwarks of freedom and democracy are going after those churches too. And even though those churches are not separate from Russia, and I recognize that, and yes, the Russian Orthodox Church has been instrumentalized, I agree. I still say under a rule of law state, you go after those people who commit offenses, you do not ban a church.

- If you start banning people's religions, then how are you better than what you oppose?

- Exactly. And yet, the Religious Freedom Conference honors the very author of this insane legislature.

- Who sponsored this conference?

- It's, you know, all I know is, I think there's a chairman who's a former Republican senator. I think it's made up of charitable donations. I haven't studied who the sponsor is. I'm sure there's U.S. government involvement.

Mr. Vance, Vice President Vance spoke, spoke very well. I mean, he's, as I said before, I mean, he's set off a revolution in Europe with his speech, which I welcome, because I believe he's identified a tremendous problem in Europe in terms of freedom of speech and the basic freedoms. Although, you know, I have to say, working in Georgia, working and knowing what's happening in Transdniester, you cannot minimize the threat of Vladimir Putin. It exists.

- So, you said that you went up to the U.S. Congress and you tried to get the attention of members. J.D. Vance was the only one who would listen to you out of 100 senators. What about in the House?

-Oh, I attended a few meetings, as I said, where I was generally insulted by people. We had very few—

- Insulted?

- Yeah, we had very few congressmen who would meet us. We had some, some very courageous lobbyists who we worked for, worked with and still work with, including a Democrat, a former Democrat, Congressman Ron Klink, who, because he's, I think, a devout Christian, who really suffered a lot reputationally by working with me. And God bless him for having the strength and courage to do that. Because as he knows, I mean, we're completely nonpartisan.

We're not actually lobbying the United States at all. We want people to talk to the Ukrainians and simply explain to the Ukrainians that this law to ban our Church is unacceptable.

- Especially since we're paying for it. Have you ever voted for a Republican in your life?

- Never.

- I just wanted to be clear about that. So you were arrested by Putin and you've never voted Republican. So just want people to understand where you're coming from here.

- No, no. I mean, that's very much where I'm coming from. Though I will say, you know, quite frankly, that I think what's been dangerous about the past few administrations is that their breaks with rule of law have been wildly pronounced but hidden. Whatever you want to say about President Trump, I think that it's far healthier where he does a number of things I disagree with. It's out in the open and we can address it, attack it if we think it's wrong, but it's out in the open.

With the prior administrations, it was all hidden from view and it was almost impossible to attack, like sanctions. You know, almost impossible to attack, very difficult to deal with.

And this authoritarianism, this denial of the civic space is hugely important. And it's what we in the United States have done to ourselves. I really can barely watch CNN. I understand they have serious problems with President Trump. I get it. But there is a whole world out there, and President Trump has made a tremendous amount of waves in that world.

Surely, beyond bashing the guy, we can deal with some of the real problems, like my Church, which has never been covered by CNN.

- Ever?

- Ever.

- To my knowledge. They cover Ukraine all day long, but they’ve never mentioned that the government banned a Christian denomination.

- Let alone the majority church of the country... Let’s be clear. And when I went to church, one of my first times in church, but the patriarch of our church (primate of the UOC – Ed.) insisted that I attend church.

- I love you call it "our church."

- He insisted I attend the churches because he wanted me to see the difference between our Church (UOC – Ed) and the other Church (OCU – Ed). So I went. I went to church after church. Our churches were full. Our priests were like rush hour traffic on a Sunday. I mean, we’re having multiple services because there are now so few churches because the other church is stealing them. So when you go to the other church, they’re virtually empty. In fact, many of the churches they’ve stolen, they’ve turned into museums.

- I mean, which is like Soviet. What’s going on?

- No, no.

- Banning the religion and creating a state church.

- Let me tell you something. I was in the Soviet Union. So I’m, you know, I’m older than you. I was in the Soviet Union.

- Trying to get the Jewish refusenings out.

- Correct. Beginning. Just at the beginning, I wasn’t a lawyer then or doing much of anything, but I went because I knew this problem existed. I was a very, very young boy, but my father wanted me to go. I think I was one of the only, only guys. I think I was the first soul traveler to a place called Kishinev Moldova. This is way back in the 70s and was interrogated. My first interrogation by the KGB was when I was like 17. So I’ve had a long history in this region.

I went to the Lavra (Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra – Ed.) when I studied under Ukraine’s greatest historian, Bohdan Botsiurkiv. His son is now a noted, a noted speaker and expert on, on Ukraine and very pro-Ukrainian and a very, very serious person. But I went there at the express direction of his father and I went to the Lavra to just experience this incredible. I mean, the Lavra was incredible and this has become the scene of these clashes where Zelensky’s government has taken the Lavra, control of the Lavra away from our church and handed it to the nationalist church.

So there’s this huge nationalism in Ukraine that is the motive behind Zelensky’s destruction of my Church, and it’s political. Our Church and the Donbas, the more Russian speaking part of Ukraine, had supported Zelensky. But with the unfortunate aggression against Ukraine, that voter block is denied to him. So he has had to move much further to the xenophobic side of the Ukrainian spectrum to keep his base. And we think that’s, that’s primarily some of the politics behind him agreeing to the destruction of our Church.

- Can I see what may be an unanswerable question? So you were describing the effects of the Ukraine war on the West and on the United States and it’s basically knocking the US from its perch and it’s causing all kinds of problems. The loss of the US dollar, the alignment, the permanent now alignment between Russia and China. If you were China and you were trying to, you know, assert yourself as a global power, which they have every right to do in my opinion, but you’re trying to subvert the United States, like you would do everything you could. Like whose interest is being served in this? And it seems like the Chinese interest is being served. So if you have our entire media, our entire political establishment is all in on this thing that hurts the United States, is it possible that China has a role in that?

- Look, I’m somebody who, as a young man, studied China and then the Soviet Union. I do not have an animus towards China in terms of seeing them in the negative light. I think there was hope for our relationship that’s been kind of destroyed. I think it’s still possible, by the way, to be resurrected. But certainly it is to some extent in China’s interest. But we never understand something that’s fundamental to Xi Jinping’s survival, which is he is on an economic fault line. He needs GDP growth at plus 5% to survive. A flourishing relationship with the United States could be in his interest under a different type of relationship. And I think what we’ve done is we’ve almost forced the Russians into becoming an unequal partner to the Chinese. The Chinese, of course, have this history of a century of humiliation, suffering under unequal treaties. Now they are the ones offering unequal treaties to countries like Russia.

- They are. And there’s massive Chinese investment in Russia right now. Massive. And it’s very noticeable when you go there. Why is this country so prosperous? There’s a war going on. A real war, too. And the answer, in part, is because there’s huge Chinese investment in Russia and that’s solidifying a relationship based on mutual benefit, I would say, to the point where it can’t be broken.

- Well, never underestimate the root antagonisms of the Chinese-Russian relationship.

- Well, maybe that’s a solid point.

- And so a different administration than the Democrats could possibly engage in some of the behavior that Nixon first developed. It is absolutely contrary to American interests for China and Russia to be one. So we have, from a geopolitical standpoint, a lot of work to do. Working with the Indians, working with others in terms of trying to figure out how to divide these countries. And this is why a focus solely on Ukraine to the tremendous cost of our own geopolitical position is so insane.

- I completely agree and I travel a lot, so I see the effects everywhere. So you’ve mentioned that Europe, for whatever reason, I still think it’s baffling, but is all in on this. Completely all in on it. Kirsten Sturmer, just Prime Minister of Great Britain, just said that they’re signing some hundred-year defense deal with Ukraine. It’s insane. Germany, same thing. China, we know, is benefiting to some extent. India, you said, is a massive beneficiary of all the stuff. What about the Middle Eastern countries? What about the Arab world and Israel? What interests do they have here? What connection do they have to the Ukraine?

- I think it’s Africa that suffered the most, simply because their food supply is terribly impaired. Riyadh benefits always from this type of geopolitical issue because they benefit from great relationships with everybody. It’s like this old Turkish foreign policy of making friends at every border. That’s what they’re doing. As you may be aware, I also represent the Congo, which is now being horribly invaded by Rwanda. And I’ve always wondered why the United States didn’t take a stronger position there. We have destabilized Africa, the entirety of Africa with this war. And we have not addressed the fact that so much of our future is tied up in Africa, yet the entire continent is being completely destroyed. Talk to people in Zambia or some of these other countries who can’t get food because the costs are now so high. We need to look at this struggle in a far broader sense.

- Because Ukraine is a huge producer of fertilizer. And basic exports.

- Yes, absolutely. So geopolitically, the Europeans have only one thing in their mind, which is they don’t want to see another Munich. And my argument is this isn’t Munich, it’s Potsdam. There’s been a three-year war, hasn’t gone all that well. And we need to have a geopolitical understanding of where we are and what is in not only America’s interest, but the world’s interest. And Ukraine has to have a generation to survive and grow.

- Well, exactly.

- But all of that is beyond my mandate, which is to try to save the Orthodox, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, so that it can survive for another thousand years.

- It’s just interesting though. I’m just asking these questions because I know that you represent clients in a bunch of different countries and have for almost 50 years and you travel a lot. But it does seem like this is part of the cost of a world the West. This is not true in the East, by the way, but in the West, the only history people know is kind of a half-bank, you know, kind of a Twitter version of World War II. And everything is through the same lens. And it’s like, this isn’t Munich, actually, as you point out. And maybe ignorance is part of... People are very inflexible in their minds.

- You know, it’s funny, as a young boy, I went to Moscow. At that point, sort of pseudo-communist sympathizer is a very young man. And I remember being taken... I could not attend any city without first being taken to the war cemetery. We never talk about 27 million Russian dead. My family would never have survived without Russian troops. And yes, they visited horrible times on Eastern Europe. Totally true. But that sacrifice saved us. And when we dehumanize them, we are in a way dehumanizing ourselves. And it should never be the policy of our government to allow any other foreign state to so contaminate our narrative and our discussions.

- And, you know, quite frankly, too late.

- Yes. But, you know, even in terms of using the International Criminal Court, the way they have, where the court has gone to such incredible lengths, with respect to this case. Again, I’m not in any way denying Russian war crimes. I’m simply saying that there’s a difference between punishing wrongdoers and dehumanizing a nation and a people. And we have allowed this to get into a horrific attack on the people with the sanctions and all of that that isn’t American. And it’s not who we are. And we need to stop.

- Have there been any media outlets at all globally? Let’s just stick to the United States and Great Britain, the English-speaking media – who’ve been wanting to give you a fair hearing?

- I would say, in general, no. We managed to get one op-ed from one of our priests in the times of London, which I am deeply grateful. We managed to get a couple of stories in the Telegraph. Nothing in the Guardian. The Wall Street Journal is completely cut off from us, and I would say reality. Wall Street Journal is completely cut off from reality.

- Wall Street Journal is actually every bit as dishonest as The New York Times might read, but much stealthier about it. And it has this kind of unbreakable relationship with late middle-aged right-wingers that it uses to spew lies and stupidity and propaganda.

- Well, there’s one editorial writer who interviewed me about the Church when I was in Kyiv and I had some hope, but then wrote a crazy story denouncing me and the Church, which we managed

- Denouncing you?

- Yeah, yeah, which we managed, I think, at the end of many rewrites, to get her editorial only. We moved it from terrible to very bad.

- Who was this?

- I can’t even remember her name.

- Some lady writer at the—

- Yeah, but who’s written consistently pro-Ukraine pieces. And one of the things—

- So, like, how dare you defend a church’s right to exist?

- Exactly. One of the things about the Ukraine beat is it’s very often the same people saying the same things, just with different background music, again and again, in a very propagandistic way, avoiding the hard truths. I mean, these press gangs that are grabbing young men and taking them to the front get so little coverage. The fighting inside the presidential administration that we know exists gets so little coverage.

- Oh, some have reached out to me. So, it’s pretty clear that Zelensky’s in charge, but is he really... you referred a couple of times to Andriy Yermak.

- Yes.

- Who was that?

- He is the capo de capo. I mean, he is the guy that arranges the theft of assets. He is the guy who organizes a lot of the activities of the SBU to go after opponents and go after assets. It’s my privilege to represent a gentleman named Vadim Novinsky. They took his assets, which involved gas, because his crime is supporting the church. He’s a very high-level archdeacon in the church and has financially supported the church. And, by the way, was sanctioned by Russia, yet he’s charged with treason.

- Why?

- Because he supports Ukraine’s historic Church. Mother church, the majority church of the country. Yes, but what’s amazing about them illegally taking his assets is they didn’t deploy them for the benefit of Ukraine. They were gas wells and they shut them. And when his own people said to these gangsters, "Run the wells. You’re destroying the wealth of the country." They didn’t. And so, they briefly gave the licenses back, then they took it back again for political reasons because they charged him with treason. But they don’t care. It reminds me of my first day as part, privileged to be part of a major legal team in Moscow in 2003. And my, the lead counsel, the Russian lawyer, was a very famous Russian lawyer, brilliant, brilliant man named Padva. And I said to him, because the Russian stock market had gone down 50% after they attacked my client at that time, I said to him, "Well, surely, surely Mr. Putin will understand that this can’t go on." He took a newspaper. He hit me over the head. And he said, "Don’t ever say anything that stupid again. This is Moscow. They will steal the very desk in this court and they’ll keep stealing."

The corruption in Ukraine is as ingrained as it is in Moscow. The secret police in Ukraine are using old KGB texts to jail my priests. They are charging them with psycholinguistic crimes. What’s that? This is out of 1984, psycholinguistics. This is basically alleging that what they’re saying has meanings similar to what Putin says, and therefore it’s a crime. People are being jailed away from their families for psycholinguistics under Article 161 of the Ukrainian Criminal Code for essentially causing religious division. Now, the OCU members or those working for them with swastikas on their arms don’t get charged. But our church, our folks get charged routinely. Now, Novinsky is charged with psycholinguistic crimes. His entire life has been disrupted. His assets stripped from him. The horrific thing said about him, because when he was a member of the Rada, so therefore privilege communications occurred, he had some disagreements with the government of the day. They are using Soviet texts to go after their own political opponents. And Zelensky, this man that has been virtually treated as a saint by the Europeans, is using the SBU in a manner no different than how Russian leaders have used the FSB or the KGB. No different, including the arrest and beating of priests. And our papers say nothing. It is just, you by the way, sir, are the only one, especially heroically, that first interview, that first interview changed and saved and delayed the passage of this law till now. And I will be forever in your debt for doing it.

- You’ve told us something that I didn’t realize, which is the US government established a fake state church in a foreign country, which is obviously unconstitutional, but also Soviet. I’ve also noticed this other trend, which I don’t really understand, but it seems equally bad, which is to try and change the culture of the Slavic countries. Slavic countries are traditional, they believe in gender roles, for example. And there does seem to have been and continue to be this effort from the US State Department and maybe others in the US government to kind of change the way Ukrainian society is ordered. Have you noticed this?

- Yes. I mean, I, you know, as I’ve said, I had the privilege of listening to Robert Destro, a former, I think, deputy secretary in charge of human rights, talk about some of what he saw going on, funding for atheist groups, funding for—

- Funding for atheist groups?

- Funding for atheist groups. That’s the whole story right there. Yeah. Funding for all sorts of groups that certainly you could wonder if this is in the interest of the United States. I mean, I have nothing against atheists. I don’t know why we would necessarily feel it was incumbent upon us to fund them. But there is, there’s an excellent book written.

- Like that’s actually, if you think about it outrageous, the whole pretext for this is Russia’s stages illegal and provoked invasion three years ago. So we have to defend Ukraine from Russia. Okay. At least that makes a kind of sense, true or not. But why would you want to change the religious belief of Ukrainians or the family structure of Ukrainians?

- Well, is there their argument in terms of my church has been, well, your church has some relationship to Russia. So they continue to make the argument, even though we believe we’ve disproven it, that they are not. That there is no link. Our link is canonical. It’s through, if you will, the book and our government cannot control canon law. That that is surely outside the purview of any government.

- So it’s sort of the same argument that that a lot of Arab countries made in during the Suez crisis in 56. They had huge Jewish populations in a lot of the, you know, Morocco and Algeria and, you know, thousand year old, multi thousand year old Jewish populations. And they’re like, let’s see, you’re Jewish. The Jews in this other country, Israel did something we don’t like. Therefore, we’re blaming you or kicking you out. It’s like not that, because you’ve got the same book. That’s that canonical connection.

- That’s, that’s the logic. And, and this is being done very scientifically in a, in a very, I would have to say, it’s almost a craze. It’s just a crazed psychosis going on because you have these ultra right folks in Ukraine. Basically, now some of the churches have taken Maidan, the locus of the 2014 events, and set up shrines in the OCU churches to Maidan. So they’ve even changed the religion itself to conform to Ukrainian nationalism.

- So they’re basically worshiping of CIA coup.

Yeah. I mean, it’s an icon that they’re they’re exchanging icons. So you’re talking.

- So this is a state religion you’re describing.

- Yeah, it is. And, and, and what I, what I want to, I want to be clear that there was a desire for this within Ukraine for 100 years, because there’s this view, and I think it’s a true view, that, that Russia had engaged in Russification, sort of depriving Ukraine of its culture, which we agree with. But our Church certainly does not make any demands about stopping anybody from praying in any way they want. We are simply saying, don’t steal our churches, don’t jail our priests, and don’t destroy the religion.

And, you know, we have experts. Dr. Bremer from, I think, one of the German Catholic universities has spoken out his holiness, the Pope has spoken out the UN has spoken out the US mission to the OSCE has spoken out. Human Rights Watch did a special report about our church and what’s going on. This isn’t just me now. When you first had me on it was just me. Now it’s the Church of England. So we have an entire world condemning the Ukrainian government, and the only people defending it are their friends in Washington.

- So shameful and disgusting. So, but we’re clearly at an inflection point because as you have said, the vice president of the United States just gave this speech at the Munich Security Conference, this is the biggest speech given in Europe in a while, I think it’s fair to say, in which he JD Vance kind of reset the terms of the relationship. And so if you’re Zelensky, the bottom line is you’re no longer in control of Washington. So where does that leave Zelensky?

- Listen, I, you know, the information I got this morning is it’s left him very angry, very addled and working to sort of form a coalition of European leaders around him.

- Why does he think he gets, he has like a moral right to run the US government? It’s pretty cheeky, I’d say.

- Well, he seems to think he has a moral right to run the European government, and I will tell you from trying to interact with the EU, he’s right, he’s running it. I mean, these people in the EU won’t talk to me, and if they talk to me, they won’t listen. I mean, it’s incredible. He has them completely wrapped. I mean, I’ve, he doesn’t have Orban wrapped, but he has—

- Well, the Ukrainian government took US tax dollars to try to overthrow Orban, maybe to kill him, you know. So that’s a fact. So that itself, you know, Hungary is in NATO. So you can’t, one NATO power cannot attack another NATO power. Like, what is that? This whole thing has just scrambled the eggs of the world.

- Yeah, I have no knowledge of that. All I can say is that the information we’ve gotten is that the meeting that took place and the reestablishment of more normalized relations between the United States and Russia, leading to some discussion, has been, there’s been a horrible reaction within the presidential administration, and we fear that this will cause further repression of the Church.

- Can Zelensky with, you know, we can debate what his actual approval rating is, but I mean, I would bet my house is not over 50. Can he hang on?

- Look, I bet my house, it’s not over 20. I have no idea, because when you have the secret police, you’ve got power. So I don’t, you know, I can’t answer that question. I can just say that if you’re an opponent of Zelensky, this is a moment of fear, because he is clearly doubling down on the repression. And anyone as opposed to Zelensky should be in fear, because he is a man that is a dictator. I mean, however you want to phrase it, that’s who he is. He is running a police state. Our friends don’t want to say that, but that’s the reality of Ukraine today.

- What’s the other word for it? I can’t think of one.

- I can’t either. But you never see that in any newspaper in the West.

- So that really bothers me. Look, there are tons of dictatorships around the world, but the West is supposed to be this beacon of freedom and enlightenment, respect of human rights, etc. etc. What does it tell you as an American, as a product of the West, that all of our big institutions seem to like the Zelensky dictatorship? They like it. I’ve confronted a bunch of people. You think it’s okay to ban a church? Well, that church is pro-Russia. Okay, well, you say it’s not pro-Russia. I don’t care if it is. You can’t ban other people’s religions, period. I don’t care how much you dislike them. I don’t care if it’s Scientology or Kabbalah. It doesn’t matter. Hinduism doesn’t matter. You can’t ban other people’s religions. And yet, I don’t know anyone who’s bothered by it in a high position in the West. So what does it tell you about the people in high positions in the West?

- Well, it means that we have become disconnected from in reality who we are and who we’re supposed to be.

- Yeah, well, it’s a diplomatic way of putting it.

- Yeah, and it does not bode well for our future as a country.

- That’s exactly it.

- And that’s what’s frightening to me.

- You feel that.

- Yes, I feel that. I feel it’s shocking to me how alienated I am representing this Church because I’m not accepting the narrative that’s been accepted by others. And so my firm, myself, we are paying a terrible price. Not nearly as bad as our client who faces physical violence and the destruction of their religion. But there is no quarter being given to disputing what’s going on. This guy has, he has seemed to have a complete lock on our institutions on Washington.

Now, we just spoke at the conference we weren’t able to speak a year ago. Maybe that’s a good sign. We’re going to try to go back on the Hill. I was there a few weeks ago. No member would meet us, but that could have just been the transition. We’re going to go back and try again. But it really is, the Zelensky effect is something that needs to be studied because it’s incredibly unhealthy for us. Number one is a democracy. Number two, in terms of our geopolitical reckoning, who we are in the world has to be reassessed. And I listened.

I’m actually a Canadian and British lawyer, although I have a master’s in American law. I don’t practice here. And of course, now that I’m a Canadian, we could be at war, even though I’m an American as well.

- Well, you’ll just be a state, apparently.

- Exactly. That’ll be okay. But I will say that what this presidency is doing is, with God’s help, opening up our eyes to what’s been going on.

- That’s right.

And I have to say that as a lawyer, I am deeply in awe. Firstly, you have to hand it to President Trump, stamina like I’ve never seen in 10 human beings.

- It’s unbelievable.

- Secondly, you have to accept that the Justice Department was weaponized. Whoever you are as a lawyer in this country, there is no doubt that the weaponization that took place under the Democrats was severe. I have a lot of issues with what happened regarding January 6. I’m going to have a lot of issues with what’s going on at the Justice Department and the FBI. But I will say, do not say it is this president who has politicized the DOJ. This is a systemic problem that has been horrifically exploded during the last Democratic presidency.

- So last question. I’m not going to ask you what year you graduated law school, but... Thank you. But it was a while ago. You said you’ve been practicing for over 40 years. When you graduated law school, I bet there were a ton of people with your attitudes in your class. Similar attitudes about human rights, rule of law, politics, America’s Place in the World. Now you’re literally the only one left that I’ve met from your generation. What’s it been like for you with your friends, your peers, people you know have known your whole life? You come back and all of a sudden you’re being denounced as a Russian stooge? What effect has that had?

- Well, it’s interesting. I said 20 years ago that there was a terrible danger in the United States to the corporatism of criminal law.

- Yes.

- We have turned criminal law into the activity of big corporate law firms. In New York, even today, there are a bunch of small firms that take on difficult cases. Brafman, Agnifolo, some of these guys in small firms taking on tough, tough, tough cases that I think of as real defenders. But the corporate titans that are doing the big cases have become entirely focused on compliance.

You’re somebody, I’m sure, with far more resources than a poor guy like myself. But if you engage in transnational business, you know the hassles of even moving $10 across borders. These corporate law firms are making tens of millions off of managing compliance because of, and this is a separate story, in my view, this over-regulation, money laundering allegations. Money laundering is the most dangerous crime governments have ever invented because it basically criminalizes activity that very many people never knew was criminal. You could be charged with money laundering if you’ve engaged in asset or money transfers when you had no idea at the time that it was criminal.

- They don’t care about rape on a subway platform, and if they did, we wouldn’t have it. A lot of countries don’t have rape on subway platforms because that’s horrifying. It’s a violation, the most basic violation of someone’s civil rights. What they care about is money laundering. I noticed, I just read today, DOJ was issuing some statement on money laundering. Every day, it’s money laundering. It’s because people using their money that they earned in ways that they choose to use it, that’s a massive threat to the people in power.

- Yes, it is. And again, another day, I’ll tell you about my use of human rights law to stop the freezing of assets and freezing of monies. This compliance psychology is a tremendous danger that we foster in our big firms. And that is, you know, so if you ask me after 45 years, how do you feel? It is a sense of tragedy that our basic rights have been withered away in so many events of emergency. Whenever I hear emergency or crisis, whether it’s COVID, the war on terror, the war on crime, these are all events that chip away at our freedoms and they’re cumulative. They go on and on and they further narrow the scope for our activity. And we need a dramatic rethink of all of that in order for us to be free.

- So when you’re a kid, when you’re a young lawyer, when you’re in law school, Brandenburg versus Ohio, the big speech cases, those are all very well known, right, to everybody in your class. Do you think someone graduating Yale Law now has any real sense of that?

- You know, I’m giving a speech Friday to 60 top law students. I’ll know better after that. I think that unfortunately we’re raising lawyers to fit into these corporate firms. This whole sort of compliance culture and you know, I’m probably, God help me, probably one of the only lawyers that will applaud the Trump administration for stopping FCPA enforcement. It’s not that I’m in support of corruption and it’s not that I think we shouldn’t come up with a system to stop it. It’s that the FCPA has represented a massive commercial barrier for American business to enter Latin America and Africa. We need to be in those places and now maybe we’ll have a shot because the compliance barrier simply made it only possible for some of our largest business.

- Well, that’s the whole point.

- Yes.

- That was all when Dodd-Frank. Yes. It’s like, you know, all the small guys die when the big guys can pay enough lawyers to stay within the law or the regs.

- Yeah, that’s right.

- Bobby Amsterdam, I’m grateful for what you’re doing and I’m grateful that you exist. And when liberals like you went extinct, everyone made fun of people like you because they’re annoying. They were jumping up and yelling about rights, but I was one of the only people who felt sad when your whole way of thinking died because I felt like we really needed that. And it turns out I was right. Well, thank you again.

- Thank you.

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