US media personality Tucker Carlson’s recent interview with a representative of the Union of Orthodox Journalists exceeded 54 million views in five days. However, a look at the Union of Orthodox Journalists raises a few questions about the organization’s real purpose, its actual members, and its funding.
In a viral 10-minute video segment released on X (formerly Twitter), Tucker Carlson and Robert Amsterdam, a representative of the Union of Orthodox Journalists, denounced what they claimed was the Ukrainian government’s widespread persecution of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church-Moscow Patriarchate (UOC-MP), due to the arrests of several priests for actively supporting Russia’s war on Ukraine.
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Union or “front”?
“This institution is neither a Union nor does it consist of professional journalists,” said Anatoly Babynsky, a lecturer in theology at Ukrainian Catholic University who specializes in church history and relations. “You will not find anywhere any statutory documents of this Union or the procedure for becoming a member and the criteria for such membership.”
Ukrainian religious writer and expert Oleksandr Kyrylenko agrees: “It is misleading that they are a ‘union,’” Kyrylenko said. “It is not a trade union, and they mislead journalists because of this name, as they themselves do not represent any journalists. And their government records show that they are not registered as a union in Ukraine.”
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In fact, Ukrainian government records indicate that the economic activity of the Union is limited to the “publishing of magazines and periodicals, television broadcasting activities, other information services, public relations activities,” and the renting of office materials.
The Union’s website is polished, and publishes prodigious amounts of content in English, Russian, Ukrainian, Georgian, Romanian, and Greek. However, the Union’s website gives no indication as to whom the Union represents, how to join it, or who is actually a member. There is no means by which to pay “union dues” online, nor make donations, nor a physical address to be visited. Moreover, who owns or hosts the website is not listed.
The website describes the Union as being of Ukrainian origin; however, it maintains active social media accounts on the Russian websites of Vkontakte and Odnoklassniki, both of which are blocked in Ukraine.
Most of the Union’s social media posts have little in the way of information and virtually no likes or shares. The Ukrainian version of the Union’s Facebook page, which features posts seemingly every day, has only three followers. The “About” section of the organization’s YouTube channel is blank.
Seeking to demystify what the Union is all about, a press inquiry, sent to the only email listed on the Union’s website, bounced back with an automated message that the mailbox is full.
The Union’s finances don’t appear to add up either. An American web developer was asked by Kyiv Post how much a site such as the Union’s might cost to maintain. The expert estimated that the web development, hosting services, database servers, and database management and analytics would tally around $17,275 a month, not including the overhead to produce content in six different languages across multiple social media platforms.
Yet in 2020, the organization reported an income of roughly $18,560 and expenses of around just $872.
"Every single one of the Union’s articles is a ‘hit job’ attacking other churches as schismatic and heretical…"
The Union’s output is itself questionable. Giacomo Sanfilippo, founding editor of the Orthodoxy in Dialogue website, issued a December 2019 public service announcement about the Union, stating that “whatever Russia’s so-called ‘Union of Orthodox Journalists’… has on offer, it’s clearly not journalism.”
“In Ukraine, [the Union’s website] has never claimed to provide balanced or unbiased coverage of events, although some outside Ukraine may have this impression,” Babynsky said.
Sanfilippo told Kyiv Post that “every single one” of the Union’s articles “is a hit job” attacking other churches, notably the autocephalous Orthodox Church of Ukraine, as schismatic and heretical.
Catholics don’t fare much better with the Union. Both Sanfilippo and Babynsky pointed to the group’s use of the derogatory term “Uniate” when referencing the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church.
In contrast, the Union’s posts on the UOC-MP are “unfailingly glowing,” said Sanfilippo. “This isn’t how journalism works. This is propaganda, plain and simple.”
“The Union of Orthodox Journalists is more a political than a religious organization,” said Lilia Kovalyk-Vasiuta, chief editor of the Religious Information Service of Ukraine. “This is a pro-Russian organization that is directly connected to the Russian Orthodox Church… and promotes the politics of the Russian world.”
Sanfilippo said the Union “serves as little more than… (an) arm of the Moscow Patriarchate’s disinformation apparatus.”
Babynsky confirmed that conclusion, telling Kyiv Post the entity is considered by many to be the creation of an Orthodox oligarch whose alleged faith “has become a kind of substitute for Soviet ideology.”
Babynsky added: “This includes the ideology that justifies Ukraine’s inseparability from Russia.”
The Union acts as a “semi-official resource” of the UOC-MP, in which “they say things that are not appropriate to say in official public messages – because it is often something that is beyond good taste,” Babynsky said.
And – as demonstrated in Carlson’s interview with Amsterdam – the Union “primarily aims to convey to the Western audience a message about the ‘persecution of the faithful of the UOC-MP in Ukraine,’” Babynsky said. “This is not a new tactic, as the UOC-MP seeks to strengthen internal unity and cultivate the perception among its members that they are a fortress under siege, surrounded by perceived enemies.”
KGB Connection
While noting that many individuals in the UOC-MP are “highly critical of the leadership,” said Babynsky, “it is undeniable that a portion of the clergy is connected to the Russian special services.”
“I have worked with Soviet KGB documents which, unlike in Russia, are available in Ukraine for scholars,” he said. “Based on this, I can confidently assert that the level of control over the Church and the collaboration of the clergy was extensive. I have no doubt that today the FSB has an even more extensive network of agents within the Russian Orthodox Church, both in Russia and Ukraine.”
Babynsky added that ultimately, the UOC-MP “has not been able to accept the fact that Ukraine is a multi-confessional state” in which “Ukrainian churches have built quite good relations between Catholics, Orthodox, Protestants. There is a lot of cross-acquaintance and friendship.”
“The only denomination that has always kept its distance is the UOC-MP,” he said. “Not only did it keep its distance, but it also behaved as if everyone were its guests – and, most importantly, as ‘uninvited guests.’”
While Carlson’s interview with Amsterdam parroted Moscow’s familiar casting of Ukraine as repressive, the nation’s overall freedoms are due in large part to its high levels of religious tolerance – which Babynsky said would “effectively combat the metastasis of totalitarianism.”
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