Ukrainian govt lobbyist in U.S. claims UOC churches were destroyed by AFU

Julian Hayda. Photo: Hayda's Facebook

In a recording of a phone conversation provided to the Union of Orthodox Journalists in America by a confidential source, the deputy director of communications at Razom for Ukraine, Julian Hayda, made an unexpected statement about the destruction of churches of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.

The recording was made during an emergency meeting of the American Coalition for Ukraine held on the evening of December 17. The discussion focused on strategies to counter the efforts of defenders of religious freedom in the United States.

“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 said in the conversation with fellow lobbyists.

Julian Hayda studied at the Ukrainian Greek Catholic seminary in Kyiv, and his father is a priest of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church.

According to UOJ USA, during the same conversation Haida also noted that the Day of Action organized by the St John Society on Capitol Hill was effective because the participants “were visibly Orthodox.” According to him, this meant that “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.”

Earlier, the UOJ reported that a leaked internal document of Ukrainian lobbyists described religious freedom as their “Achilles’ heel” in efforts to promote Kyiv’s interests in the US Congress.

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