'Trump's pastor' visits Ukraine

To repair the difficult relations between MAGA and Ukraine, Rabbi Moshe Azman of Kiev has brought evangelical pastor Mark Burns to the Russian-invaded country, whom the tour organizers have presented as Trump's "spiritual advisor." On his X account, Burns introduces himself with a link that directly associates him with the president. It leads to a 2016 article in Time magazine discussing one of his political candidacies endorsed by Trump. In the title, Time calls Burns "Trump's Top Pastor." Trump again endorsed Burns in the latter's latest failed bid for Congress. In the endorsement video, Trump says of the pastor that he is a great friend.

Thanks to retired U.S. Navy Captain Gary Tabach, I was able to interview him at Kiev's Brodsky Synagogue, also known as the Central Synagogue. Shortly after noon on Monday, Burns arrived there accompanied by Rabbi Azman, Tabach himself and two other Jewish men who were part of the delegation. They had come from some of the many meetings they had with Ukrainian leaders, soldiers, wounded veterans and civilians with whom Pastor Burns was able to learn firsthand what Russia has done in Ukraine.

In the synagogue's underground restaurant, I asked the pastor about his impressions of the trip. He told me almost immediately that it had changed his mind about the war. Like many conservatives in the U.S., he said, he had fallen for the "propaganda" about Ukraine and that talking directly to Ukrainian soldiers and victims of Russian atrocities had opened his eyes to what has happened there.

In a message posted in 2023 on X, Burns called the Ukrainians elite warmongers and accused them of wanting war. In one of the messages he posted on Musk's social network during the visit, the pastor sends a completely different message: "These soldiers on the front lines are not asking for money. They are asking for 1,000 tanks, 300 F-35s, anti-air weapons to shoot down the drones that still fire at civilian buildings, and killing people."

"These soldiers on the front lines are not asking for money. They are asking for 1,000 tanks, 300 F-35s, anti-air weapons to shoot down the drones that still fire at civilian buildings, and killing people."Mark Burns

"When I'm seeing pictures of dead bodies of children and old people, or hear firsthand accounts of pastors having their hands tied behind their backs made to get on their knees and shot in the back of their heads, or the very young citizen soldiers who took up arms getting blown to pieces by attack drones thanking President Trump and begging for more ammunition to defend their homes, young wives, and children, I care less about whether you like President Zelensky or don't want to give more money to Ukraine," he had written earlier in the same message.

Before interviewing Burns, I was able to talk in the lobby of the synagogue with one of the soldiers whom the pastor embraced. His name is Vyacheslav, he is from Mariupol and is 20 years old. Before the war, he was a ship mechanic and enlisted to defend his country at the start of the invasion in 2022. Vyacheslav lost part of a leg fighting against the Russians in the Kremina forests. He walks on a prosthetic leg and has already returned to the military to defend the Donetsk region on which the Russians are focusing their ambitions. With the help of Tabach, of whom I will speak later, Vyacheslav plans to travel in May to the U.S. to continue his treatment. The soldier and the pastor agreed to meet again when the young man travels to America.

On his relationship with Trump, whose recent threat to Putin of tariffs on Russian oil the pastor wanted to reinforce in Ukraine, Burns told me that he has known and supported him since before he even ran for president. "President Trump appreciates loyalty," he said of one of the reasons he has access to the highest level in the White House. I asked him if he would share his findings from the visit with Trump, and he said yes. In addition to telling him everything he had seen and heard in Ukraine, the pastor brings for Trump a message that may be just as important: the Ukrainians he spoke with are enormously grateful to the president and continue to trust him to bring a just end to the war.

"President Trump appreciates loyalty."Mark Burns

The main man responsible for Burns' visit to Ukraine certainly deserves a brief profile in this article. Born in St. Petersburg, Rabbi Moshe Azman arrived in Kiev in 2005 to help revitalize Jewish life in Ukraine from Brodsky Synagogue, which the Communists had turned into a puppet theater. Azman is, along with Rabbi Yaakov Bleich, one of two Jewish religious leaders who use the title of chief rabbi of Ukraine, although their cordial relationship suggests no contradiction in coincidence.

Since the beginning of the war, Azman has carried out intense diplomatic and humanitarian activity on behalf of Ukrainians that has often taken him to Israel and the United States, where he has good connections with the Republican world. Rabbi Azman founded the "shtetl" (or Jewish village) of Anatevka 11 years ago near Kiev, named after the village from "The Fiddler on the Roof" and built to give refuge to displaced Jews fleeing the war with which pro-Putin militias dismembered eastern Ukraine.

On May 13, 2019, ahead of a visit by the former New York mayor and Trump lawyer to Ukraine, Azman offered Rudy Giuliani the title of honorary mayor of Anatevka. These kinds of friendships on the right side of the political spectrum became a problem during the Democratic administration years, but they are again an asset and highlight, in my view, Azman's potential for the position of ambassador to Ukraine. In addition to contacts in the right places, the rabbi has the energy, determination, political savvy and the necessary distance from President Zelensky to be an excellent representative of Ukraine's interests before the Trump administration.

The tragedy of the war so deplored by President Trump has touched in Rabbi Azman the most direct way possible, who on Sept. 12 last year buried his 33-year-old adopted son, Anton Matitiahu Samborski, killed at the front a few weeks after being deployed.

Lastly, Gary Tabach remains to be mentioned. A USSR-born Jew who emigrated with his family to America at the age of 18, he became a captain in the U.S. Navy and served as a representative of his country or of NATO in Russia and other countries of the USSR, in Poland and Turkey. Tabach spends long periods of time in Ukraine and helps wounded and amputee Ukrainian soldiers pay for care and get treated in the U.S.

Gary Tabach is both an ardent supporter of the Ukrainian cause and an active and vehement supporter of President Donald Trump and the MAGA movement. His comments on the war in Russian on his YouTube channel, where he has more than 200,000 followers, garner tens of thousands of views every week both from America and from Ukraine, Russia and the rest of the former Soviet states.

Tabach passionately advocates for the Ukrainian cause before his political co-religionists in the U.S. He is convinced that Trump will be a blessing for Ukraine, blames the mainstream media for the often caricatured image of Trump in the country and does his best to get his arguments across to Ukrainians.