Steven Moore is a former Republican chief of staff for the U.S. House of Representatives who has worked on Republican campaigns for most of his career. Since the beginning of the Russian invasion in February 2022, he has devoted all his efforts to generating conservative support for Ukraine. Moore is the executive producer of several documentaries: A Faith Under Siege, which tells the story of Ukrainian Christians tortured and killed by the Russians for their faith; No Priests Left, about the persecution of Catholics in occupied Ukraine; and has just presented Ukraine’s Stolen Children in Davos, about Ukrainian children kidnapped by Russia. He is also the founder of the NGO Ukraine Freedom Project.
How did the idea of making a film like A Faith Under Siege come about?
Due to various circumstances, I arrived in Ukraine on the fifth day of the war and wanted to help. In March, I founded the NGO Ukraine Freedom Project, which to date has delivered some 250 tons of food to affected areas, medical supplies, bulletproof vests, as well as Starlinks, drones, and generators near the front lines. A year later, I met Viktor, the guy who appears in the documentary and who was tortured by the Russians in Lugansk, and when he told me his story, I was shocked. There were many people in America who were not being honest about the situation in Ukraine, to put it kindly, such as Tucker Carlson, so when I heard Viktor’s story, I realized that something had to be done about this madness. In the fall of 2023, I had his story recorded on my iPhone and shared it with many people. Many couldn’t believe that because he was an evangelical Christian, the Russians tortured him with electricity to “drive out the demons.” Everyone said it was horrible, but if it was true, why was no one talking about it?
That’s why we looked for a way to tell this story, since we had a website and even thought about making a movie. At that time, Mike Johnson, as Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, was voting against all aid to Ukraine. Johnson had been a Baptist activist before he started his career in Congress, and he did political work for the Baptists, so we started a campaign appealing to Johnson and other Republicans about the situation of Baptists, Orthodox Christians and Catholics in Ukraine, and that Russia tortures Christians. It was tiring, but we were successful. That’s when Colby Barrett called us and said he wanted us to work together to make a film about Christians in Ukraine. That’s how the film was born.
The film was so successful that it has now been released as a series on Angel Studios, the production company behind The Chosen.
Yes, that was exciting. We got four episodes of content on Angel Studios. That’s two million people, mostly Christians, who can hear our message. It’s a great place to be.
In recent months, there has been a very significant increase in Republican voter support for Ukraine, especially among those who attend church on Sundays. This is undoubtedly the result of your work.
Yes, many conservatives were led to believe that Russia was a defender of Christianity, and it must be understood that Moscow spends $2 billion annually on global propaganda. Nearly a third of Republican voters believe that Russia is a country that promotes or protects Christian family values, which proves how effective the Russians are in the field of propaganda. We don’t have as much money, but we have the truth.
Have you witnessed the reaction that the account of what is happening in Ukraine has provoked among conservatives who had believed Russian propaganda?
I spoke at Turning Point USA’s Faith Forward pastors summit, the organization by Charlie Kirk, in front of about 500 MAGA pastors, staunch Trump’s supporters, and told them what I had seen. I showed them a two-minute trailer for the film, and after listening to me for five minutes, they were blown away. Twenty or thirty of them thanked me because they had no idea. The problem is that people like Tucker Carlson have said things about Ukraine that weren’t true, and many conservatives had never heard anything good about Ukrainians. They only knew lies.
You have also produced a film about the persecution of Catholics, No Priests Left.
Yes, it is a short documentary, 16 minutes long, which talks, through several Catholic priests, about persecution in the areas occupied by Russia. The Russian authorities have formally banned the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church and Catholic humanitarian groups in the occupied areas of Zaporizhzhia, under the pretext that they are working for foreign intelligence services, the same excuse that was used in Soviet times. They have also confiscated Catholic churches and properties and handed them over to the Russian Orthodox Church.
Two of them have terrifying stories. One was beaten to death, but fortunately survived. He told me that the Holy Spirit protected him, and I asked him how. He said that the screams, the kicks and the blows seemed very far away and that he felt a powerful person very close to him holding him up. At that moment, he understood where the martyrs of the first century drew their strength from. We have spoken with believers and priests, Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant, and the faith shown by Ukrainians is incredible. We are all amateurs in faith compared to Ukrainian Christians. I have seen things that have happened here and I know what is statistically improbable, and statistically improbable things have happened to me many times. I call them miracles.
And now, in Davos, you have presented a new film, Ukraine’s Stolen Children. When will it be released?
Probably in February, at Angel Studios. Davos is a great opportunity to send a message to a large number of important people and the Ukrainian House in Davos does a wonderful job. We presented a trailer about Ukraine’s stolen children, a very powerful piece we worked on with Save Ukraine and Bring Kids Back UA, which is a presidential initiative, and with various experts in the field. We interviewed some of these children and the families waiting for their return in a high-quality film.
You are currently in Kyiv. What is the situation like there?
It’s cold, the electricity comes and goes, and we don’t have water at times. You can put up with the cold and the lack of electricity, but the lack of water takes you back to the Stone Age, when you had to go to the river to get it. Many people focus on the weather or the military situation, but I focus on the fact that Ukraine is taking apart the ability of Putin to generate revenue for his War machine. That is the thing to think about. Ukraine is suffering, but it is not weak and is causing Russia 9,000 casualties per week. It is cold and the situation is tough, but no one is tougher than the Ukrainians.
Perhaps that is due to the faith shown in your films, which gives them strength and, at the same time, hope.
Yes, absolutely. I am in Ukraine because I want to help, and what I see in Ukraine is a real struggle for freedom that I have not seen in my country since at least World War II and perhaps the war of independence. Everyone in Ukraine was doing something else the day before Putin’s invasion. Most of the 900,000 soldiers in this army were not going to be military personnel. It is an army of citizens.
