The Christian Right Is Winning the Ukraine War
With Russia and Ukraine at a stalemate, the Christian right is making sweeping advances in parliament against women, children, and LGBTQ+ people
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While pushing for U.S. aid in early 2024, the head of Ukraine’s National Prayer Breakfast traveled the U.S., meeting with evangelicals, and telling them they could shape his nation’s future if they helped save it.
Pavlo Unguryan, a former member of the Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine’s parliament, also met with Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) in early 2024. Unguryan is well connected, the Ukrainian point man for The Fellowship Foundation, better known as The Family, cultivator of a global political network anchored in parliamentary prayer groups and breakfasts.
Unguryan’s lobbying, and his connections, led Johnson to reverse course and allow the 2024 House vote approving $61 billion in desperately needed aid for Ukraine.
Two years later, with war still raging, U.S. evangelicals are already seeing the dividends of their investment in Ukraine, even as the nation’s still fighting for its survival.
In a new post today, Ukrainian writer and human-rights advocate Svitlana Iukhymovych identifies right-wing elements of a sweeping new Civil Code the Rada has approved in draft form but that is not yet law.
According to Iukhymovych, the Civil Code draft was released on April 27, its 800 pages got 17 minutes of discussion in the Rada, and it then passed 254-2 the next day.
Speaker Ruslan Stefanchuk is identified by Iukhymovych as “The man behind the draft law,” who advertised it as moving the nation closer to the European Union. Civil rights groups and protesters say it does the opposite:
Same-sex partnerships and marriage are illegal in the draft.
Women’s divorce rights are cut back.
Children’s rights are reduced.
Rights of the disabled are reduced.
Media censorship is increased.
Public lands could be stolen or privatized.
Flouting “good morals” could be punished by a judge.
An earlier draft reduced the age of marriage, for girls, to 14, if they’re pregnant.
That language was struck, but if the revised Civil Code is approved, even the remaining changes will present new barriers for Ukraine to join the European Union, which has rules about social justice and equal rights.
Human Rights Watch says the Civil Code draft violates the European Convention on Human Rights, the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, and the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Ukrainians largely oppose aspects of the Civil Code draft. Seventy percent of Ukraine supports equal rights for LGBTQ+ people. Hundreds turned out a week ago in Kyiv, staging a mass protest in the middle of a war.
So, how is this happening?
As I reported back in 2024, as part of the campaign for U.S. aid, Unguryan promised U.S. evangelicals a Biblical oasis in Europe’s wasteland of atheism. He said so in personal appearances.
At a Feb. 5, 2024, event in Plano, TX, the week after the Washington prayer breakfast, Unguryan addressed a crowd of evangelicals.
According to the Baptist Standard, Unguryan told them that “If Ukraine can prevail against Russian aggression and protect its freedom” then, afterwards, “Christians will have both the responsibility and opportunity to rebuild the nation and shape its future direction.”
Unguryan also had access to right-wing U.S. media. Unguryan was the source for an April 10, 2026, Newsmax report on why Russia’s persecution of Christians justified supporting Ukraine.
And as a guest of Family Research Council President Tony Perkins, on April 17, 2024, Unguryan said Ukraine was “to be the Bible Belt for the European continent, such a liberal continent.” He also said:
“Let’s create strategic partnership between Christians, evangelicals, conservatives in U.S. and Christians and conservatives in Ukraine to do our missionary ministry, global missionary ministry, and to protect our values.”
Perkins responded, telling his viewers, as Washington debated Ukraine aid, “We will stand with you.”
The same day, Unguryan met in Washington with Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA), “to discuss the critical importance of the United States sending additional aid,” said Fitzpatrick, who has worked with The Fellowship. He didn’t mention Unguryan’s designs on Ukraine’s future.
How can Unguryan, a private citizen, promise such drastic regression, let alone in a modern, pluralistic nation like Ukraine? As I’ve reported, Unguryan has had the help of powerful Christian allies and partners in the U.S.: Members of Congress affiliated with The Fellowship.
He’s been associated with The Fellowship for years. Five years ago, I revealed Unguryan’s status as The Fellowship’s point man, choosing which Ukrainians get to hobnob with U.S. politicians at the prayer breakfast in Washington.
Many of his guests, I reported, were fellow crusaders against LGBTQ+ and reproductive rights. His parliamentary group’s website said explicitly that its mission included “organizing the National Prayer Breakfast in Ukraine; [and] protection of the institution of family and marriage as the basis of society.”
Rep. Tim Walberg (R-MI) backed that up in his own message at Unguryan’s Ukrainian prayer breakfast in 2019, traveling there on Unguryan’s dime. (More recently, Walberg supported Fellowship Ugandans under fire for enacting an LGBTQ+ death penalty.)
And although The Fellowship is quiet about its networks, some of the connections can be seen online in the websites of foreign governments, or social media posts. One depicted Unguryan with then-Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) in 2023. Rubio has lived at The Fellowship’s notorious C Street house and maintains ties with Fellowship lobbyists.
In an April 14, 2024, Wall Street Journal op-ed, Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-NY) urged Democrats to vote for Johnson — a far-right, theocratic Republican — as speaker, in order to ensure Ukraine aid would get a vote. Suozzi said he had just returned from Ukraine. And he had.
Suozzi met with Zelenskyy on April 4, 2024, just after Zelenskyy’s meeting with religious leaders. (His disclosure filing shows that the trip was paid for by the Howard G. Buffett Foundation.) Today Suozzi is one of a small handful of Democrats still publicly participating in Fellowship events.
Some leaders of the Congressional Ukraine Caucus have Fellowship ties, including Fitzpatrick and Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-OH).
Before the war, Unguryan’s parliamentary prayer group, a Fellowship affiliate, paid to fly Fitzpatrick and Rep. Juan Vargas (D-CA), to Unguryan’s 2021 prayer breakfast in Kyiv. As a member of the far-right Polish group Ordo Iuris posted later, “we had the opportunity to share our experiences in defending of conservative values.“
That’s still true of prayer breakfasts today, even after a European LGBTQ+ advocacy group, Forbidden Colours, told me in 2021 that they had sent briefings to Democrats warning them about prayer breakfasts and The Fellowship. (Vargas appears to have distanced himself since from The Fellowship.)
A 2021 report on LGBTQ+ and reproductive rights by European parliamentarians singled out Unguryan and his prayer breakfasts. The report called European prayer breakfasts part of an effort “to form cross-party alliances on Christian values.”
The report said that an international Christian group to which Unguryan belongs “socialises politicians onto regressive agendas through parliamentary prayer breakfasts.”
Unguryan himself has said that he’s supported by multiple Christian organizations on the right. It’s not just The Fellowship.
In April 2024 he told CBN, “many organizations from America help us, like Samaritan’s Purse, World Vision, Baptist World Alliance, Southern Baptist Convention.”
So Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has every reason to listen to Unguryan. Under fire, even a Jewish atheist stand-up comic will make concessions to Christian lobbyists. And Unguryan has his ear.
Unguryan wasn’t named publicly as attending an April 2, 2024, meeting with Zelenskyy, but I spotted him in a picture of it shortly afterward.
As I wrote the following week, Ukrainian media reported that the Ukrainian religous figures in that meeting had a single ask: They wanted Zelenskyy to initiate a formal, government-sanctioned National Prayer Breakfast with his participation and imprimatur.
Not noted by Ukrainian media was how the breakfasts and affiliated parliamentary prayer groups are key to right-wing political evangelizing around the world.
Desperate for aid, Zelenskyy didn’t hesitate, agreeing on the spot, acknowledging his need for the help of religious allies in other countries.
“This dialogue is very important for us now,” Zelenskyy said. “After all, the church has a great influence on society, on state leaders.”
Two months later, at Ukraine’s first official National Prayer Breakfast, Zelenskky championed the values of “normal people.” Zelenskyy’s government has continued to speak a language in which America’s Christian right is fluent.
For this year’s Ukraine Week — Unguryan’s annual Washington events around the National Prayer Breakfast — the Ukrainian embassy in the U.S. struck a Trumpishly false and theocratic note: “Independence is born from faith…”
The speakers list at Unguryan’s own prayer breakfast in DC that week was dominated by Fellowship insiders: Rep. Robert Aderholt (R–AL), former Reps. Jim Slattery (D-KS) Bob McEwen (R-OH), and former Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom Sam Brownback.
Also speaking: Trump White House Faith Office advisor Paula White. And Doug Burleigh, The Fellowship’s leader on Russia and former Soviet republics, including Ukraine.
On Feb. 6, 2026, the day after the big event, the U.S. National Prayer Breakfast, Unguryan held a press conference with congressional Fellowship friends including Suozzi, Kaptur, and Fitzpatrick.
Like Unguryan, Stefanchuk’s Fellowship ties go back years. A 2021 Rada press release touts a meeting between Stefanchuk and Burleigh.
It was Burleigh who brought Russian spy Maria Butina and her handler Alexander Torshin to the U.S. National Prayer Breakfast a decade ago. A picture with the release doesn’t identify the two other men surrounding Stefanchuk as Fellowship insiders, but they are.
One is Unguryan. The other is Michael Zhovnir, a Fellowship insider who lives in Washington state but has ties to Ukraine.
The meeting was about Ukraine’s National Prayer Breakfast.
"The value of prayer breakfasts is that they are a platform for dialogue between countries,” Stefanchuk said, despite their notoriety for backroom lobbying and sanitizing right-wing policy.
Stefanchuk also repeated The Fellowship’s claims of diverse prayer breakfasts, repeatedly refuted by “The Family” author Jeff Sharlet and reporting by me and others. Stefanchuk said, “Representatives of different faiths, people of different professions and views have the opportunity to meet and discuss political, economic, environmental and other challenges. And dialogue is a way to understanding."
In fact, the breakfasts are populated by those close to The Fellowship, those who support Fellowship associates financially or might, and those hoping to get close to The Fellowship’s U.S. politicians.
More recently, Stefanchuk has participated in Unguryan’s “Ukraine Week” activities in Washington, not coincidentally held the same week as the U.S. National Prayer Breakfast, traditionally the first Thursday of February.
In 2024, both Stefanchuk and, for some reason, Unguryan were on the itinerary of a congressional trip that included members with Fellowship ties.
This year’s Ukraine Week welcomed Stefanchuk, Kaptur, Fitzpatrick, and longtime Fellowship insider Sen. James Lankford (R-OK).
And this year, according to Iukhymovych, Stefanchuk refused even to meet with LGBTQ+ advocates about the Civil Code draft.
Stefanchuk blames complaints about the bill and opposition to it on “misinformation.”
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The grift goes on forever... I believe admission to the EU will clean up some of this filth the US Christian RIght think they're imposing on Ukraine...but it still stinks out loud and I'm thankful for your work bringing it to light, Jonathan.
Way to go, Jonathan. Keep looking under those creepy rocks.