When Russia invaded Ukraine, Steven Moore hurried to Kyiv even as observers predicted the smaller nation’s quick fall. Three years later, the former House GOP leadership aide is still there, helping deliver relief aid through his nonprofit, the Ukraine Freedom Project. But Moore’s coming back to Washington more often these days to bring his message to Congress and rally Republican support.
Moore, who forged strong ties to Ukraine doing public opinion research there in 2018, holds out hope that the isolationists currently advising President Donald Trump won’t hold his ear for much longer, and that the White House won’t continue to parrot Vladimir Putin’s false line that Ukraine provoked the war. As he tries to inform his old congressional contacts about the horrors unfolding on Putin’s orders, Moore said he was heartened that while some Republicans were starting to speak out, most weren’t crossing the president publicly. “The private conversations, the behind-the-scenes stuff, is more effective,” said the ex-Hill staffer, who once worked for Peter Roskam, R-Ill, then chief deputy whip.
Moore spoke with Roll Call last Thursday, before the U.S. voted with Russia against a U.N. resolution calling for Moscow to remove its troops from Ukraine. At the time, he acknowledged that his optimism might look outdated by the time this interview would run — or maybe not, if conservatives push back. “If you don’t like what Trump says, wait a few weeks,” he joked.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
Q: Why are you in D.C. right now instead of Ukraine?
A: I went to Ukraine on day five of the war, and I started doing humanitarian aid. And then one day while I was carrying boxes of food to Kharkiv, I recognized I was one of the few people in the world that have been both to the Ukrainian front and to the floor of the House of Representatives.
I’ve been to the front about 50 times, but right now it seems like the most important thing I can do is talk to Republicans, my former colleagues here in D.C.
Q: What are you telling them?
A: Putin is evil, and Russia is not our friend. One of the things we talk about most is that Russia is torturing, murdering and imprisoning evangelical Christians in Ukraine for their faith.
Tens of millions of people identify as evangelical Christians in America, and people like them are suffering. So this is not like Afghanistan, where it’s far away, and those people don’t look like us, they don’t seem like us. These are evangelical Christians, like the people that voted for Trump.
A decade of false starts with the Democrats focusing on things like the Steele dossier has made “Russian propaganda” a tired phrase among Republicans. But there is a massive effort by the Kremlin to sway opinion in the United States among conservatives and among Christians. I have really smart people, really good people, tell me, “We like Putin because he’s defending Christianity,” and that’s just not the case.
Q: What do you make of how Trump is handling Ukraine, like falsely suggesting Zelenskyy started the war?
A: Well, I learned a long time ago that if you obsess about everything that Trump says, it will lead to a dependency on anti-anxiety medicine and whiskey.
But Trump is going in a direction where he’s signaling a massive change in U.S. foreign policy, from Russia being an adversary to someone we should work with, and that’s not something that you can do overnight. Only 18 percent of Trump’s voters have a positive opinion of Vladimir Putin, and Russia is similarly underwater, so it is difficult to make that kind of sweeping change by fiat.
You’ve seen a few senators, like Roger Wicker and John Kennedy, make it clear that Putin is not someone we should be cozying up to. Probably the good news is that you’re not hearing more senators come up publicly on that, because the private conversations, the behind-the-scenes stuff, is more effective. There are certainly people working behind the scenes to try to turn Trump around on this.
He said during the campaign that he could solve it in 24 hours: I can call my friend Vladimir, and we’ll work this out. But I’m reminded of 2016, when he said he was gonna do all this stuff to health care, and then a couple months later, he said: Who knew health care could be so complicated?
Q: Things are changing minute by minute. Where are you finding optimism?
A: I can’t afford not to be optimistic. My job as someone who changes opinions, someone who educates people, is to look for paths to victory.
After the [foreign aid] bill that was passed in April 2024, the Biden administration didn’t get significant shipments of weapons to Ukraine until October, so I’m accustomed to U.S. politicians saying one thing and doing another in Ukraine. And you know, if you don’t like what Trump says, wait a few weeks. There’s nothing signed, there’s nothing etched in stone, and there’s still an opportunity for Ukraine advocates to make a difference, for Americans to make a difference, for Republicans to make a difference.
The post He rushed to Ukraine when Russia invaded. Now he’s rushing to DC to rally Republicans appeared first on Roll Call.
