Ambassador Sam Brownback has made a career out of advocating for religious liberty and human rights.
As a U.S. Senator, he helped pass the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998. After serving two terms as Governor of Kansas, he was appointed by President Trump in 2017 as the Ambassador at Large for International Religious Freedom, where he worked until 2021.
Today, as chair of the National Committee for Religious Freedom and co-chair of the International Religious Freedom Summit, Brownback’s attention is on Russia and Ukraine. He is optimistic about their recently brokered ceasefire. "It's positive–my hope and my prayer is for a just settlement for Ukraine,” he says. “They didn’t attack—Russia did."
He sees Russian President Vladimir Putin’s ambitions as an attempt to recreate a version of the Soviet Union or an even larger Russian sphere of influence. "They have to be stood up to,” he says. But he also acknowledges the price. “The Ukrainians did, and we backed them, and the Europeans have backed them. But it’s been a huge, huge, huge loss of life."
Regarding President Trump’s approach in the negotiations, Brownback sees a familiar pattern. "President Trump is a real dealmaker, and he’s done a lot of big deals… I presume he looks at this the same way."
His view is that a key aspect of negotiation is ensuring that both parties feel uncertain about the alternative to striking a deal. "You always want the other team to kind of not know what your bottom line is, to be scared of you a little bit, that things could get worse if you don’t take the deal, and that needs to be true of both the Russians and the Ukrainians."
However, he warns that the ceasefire should not be viewed in isolation but as part of a larger geopolitical struggle involving China and Iran. "We have got to head this off—not just China towards Taiwan, but China towards the world,” he says. “We’re seeing them probe a lot more in places like Nicaragua and Burma.”
He describes the China threat as “the big one we’ve got to head off." He also throws Iran into the mix and describes a "Russia-China-Iran axis," which he sees as an existential threat to Western democracies.
Brownback stresses that religious freedom must be a core component of any final agreement. "If you’ve got a buffer zone, if you’ve got occupied territories, if you’ve got contested territories, you need to protect religious freedom in all those, and that needs to be specifically addressed in any of these documents."
He notes that reports of significant religious persecution and desecration of religious sites in occupied Ukrainian territories make this issue especially pressing.
He describes Russia as an authoritarian regime that has "co-opted the Russian Orthodox Church hierarchy" to serve its geopolitical interests. "The Russian state funds the church, and as a result, it’s not free to do what it should do as a church," he says.
Brownback also highlights the disturbing role of Patriarch Kirill, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, in blessing the war. "When the full-scale invasion happened, the tanks were blessed with holy water. Soldiers were told they would be given automatic entrance into heaven if they died in service of the state. It’s shades of a jihadist vision."
He argues that this intertwining of religion and state ideology is a fundamental threat. "We’ve seen this play out in history many times. This does not go well for either the state or the church."
One of the most alarming aspects of the war, according to Brownback, is Russia’s abduction of an estimated 20,000 Ukrainian children, a tactic he finds reminiscent of terrorist groups. "It seems like more of a tactic of militant Islamists than a Russian government. But it’s an effective tactic. Your people want their children back, and it becomes a big anger point."
He believes Russia is using these abducted children as a bargaining chip in negotiations, comparing it to tactics used by Hamas and Hezbollah. "You would do anything to get those children back, and that’s, I presume, part of Russia’s strategy."
In Brownback’s view, policymakers need to be reminded about the ideological and theological motivations driving Putin’s actions. "Putin wants to create Moscow into a third Rome—a headquarters for Christendom, following Jerusalem and Rome,” he says. “If you ignore it, you’re missing a big piece of the motivation that’s going on."
