As U.S. President Donald Trump backs Russia in its war against Ukraine, Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church is visiting the United States.
Speaking on his social media platform Truth Social, Trump called Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky a “dictator.”
“He refuses to have elections. He’s low in the real Ukrainian polls. How can you be high with every city being demolished?” Trump said.
Zelensky’s five-year term of office was due to come to an end in May 2024, but the full-scale invasion by Russia in February 2022 led him to cancel elections due to the violence and disruption from the war.
Trump claimed the president only had a 4 percent approval rating, but a BBC poll shows he has the support of 57 percent of Ukrainians.
The president also appeared to blame Ukraine for the war, saying “you should have never started it. You could have made a deal.”
Visiting the United States, Shevchuk supported his country’s leader and warned against propaganda, such as claims Russia had to act against the expansion of NATO.
“If someone believes that NATO expansion is the cause of the war, they are blindly following Russian narratives and propaganda. NATO did not exist in the seventeenth or eighteenth centuries, nor were security concerns an issue for the Soviet Union during the Holodomor,” the major archbishop said in Washington D.C. on Feb. 18.
Between 7 and 10 million Ukrainians died of starvation between 1932 and 1933 in the then-member of the USSR after the Soviet Union took much of it grain and introduced disastrous modifications to the area’s grain industry.
Many scholars say Joseph Stalin was trying to end the Ukrainian independence movement through his policies, which would make the Holodomor a genocide.
“I am neither a politician nor a public figure; I am a clergyman entrusted with the custody, prayer, and guidance of God’s people—the suffering, yet dignified children of God who seek peace and demand justice,” Shevchuk said.
Metropolitan Borys Gudziak of Philadelphia was at the meeting in D.C. and urged everyone to trust in God.
“Don’t worry about politicians. Don’t worry about meetings somewhere far away. Believe that the Lord is where it hurts. He wipes the tears of those who cry. He supports those who are persecuted. God’s truth will prevail. We, Ukrainians, have experienced too many miracles not to believe,” he said.
Trump received criticism in the U.S. about his remarks on Ukraine.
Speaking on Twitter, his former vice president, Mike Pence, sent news footage from Fox News with the headline, “Russia Invades Ukraine in Largest European Attack Since WWII.”
“Mr. President, Ukraine did not ‘start’ this war. Russia launched an unprovoked and brutal invasion claiming hundreds of thousands of lives. The Road to Peace must be built on the Truth,” Pence said.
Follow Charles Collins on X: @CharlesinRome
