Our Voices of the Fight weekly Q&A returns next week.
KYIV—Russia has banned Catholicism, Evangelicalism, and Ukrainian Orthodoxy in every Ukrainian territory it occupies. It has killed 49 Ukrainian priests and pastors—most of them tortured first. It just put a drone into a monastery complex that has stood for four centuries in the heart of Lviv.
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That’s the story much of the American press missed. They called the 24 March air raid “a rare daytime attack,” when the real headline was “Russia bombs one of Europe’s most Catholic cities.”
Emotional connections matter more than security arguments.
I joined Jonathan Fink of the Oxford, UK-based Silicon Curtain podcast this week to make the case why now is the time for Europe to turn talk into action by sending non-combatant troops to Lviv. You can watch here—and read the takeaways below:
We also got into the MAGA psychology on Ukraine. Emotional connections matter more than security arguments—that’s the key. MAGA backed the Iran intervention because the Iranian people had recently been visibly massacred in the streets. And when two American airmen went down, America deployed 155 aircraft to bring them home—Americans will not count the cost for something they truly care about.
So the key is to get them to care.
Ukrainians are dying for their freedom too. But it’s harder for far-away Americans to understand Ukraine’s resistance. Many Americans don’t realize that what Iranians attempted in January, Ukrainians already did in 2014—and have been paying for it in blood ever since. Because Kyiv’s streets are relatively safe and definitely free, compared to Tehran and even to, say, Los Angeles or Minneapolis, the scale of what Ukrainians have endured to stay free doesn’t register for much of MAGA in the way that Iran does.
The key: Show Americans a people that has been dying for its freedom for twelve years and is not only still on its feet but is now helping the West and the Middle East defend against Iran. Show how Ukrainians today are some of the most devout and traditional but also tolerant Christians in Europe—even amid Russian bombings and persecutions of their churches. Build the emotional ties.
The Iranian and Ukrainian people have more in common than most people realize. So do the regimes in Moscow and Tehran trying to destroy them. And maybe the best way to wake up America is for Europe to act first—send those non-combatant troops to Lviv now.
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