On Russia Day – a national holiday considered modern Russia’s ‘Independence Day’ – in 2019, Sergey Ryakhovsky received a formal, personal congratulation from Putin. It wished him success and invited him to a gala reception at the Kremlin.
Defending the faith
The organisations that the Ryakhovsky brothers lead say they are focused on defending the rights of religious groups and individuals. There is certainly a need for such work: observers warn that Russia’s human rights record, including its treatment of religious minorities, has worsened in recent years.
Under the Yarovaya Package, passed in 2016, representatives of churches and religious denominations that are not part of the Russian Orthodox church have been subject to fines, arrests and detention, while their houses of worship have been demolished or transferred to the state or the Orthodox church.
In this context, Alexander Verkhovsky, who sits with Vladimir Ryakhovsky on Putin’s human rights council and is the director of Sova Center for Information and Analysis, says: “The SCLJ is one of the most active groups fighting for freedom of religion and belief. And they protect not only Pentecostals or Protestants in general, but all other groups, including various Muslims, Jehovah’s Witnesses and so on”.
Verkhovsky says Sergey Ryakhovsky’s connections to the government are not surprising. “As all other mainstream religious leaders in Russia, he is loyal to the current political regime,” he says. “But he speaks rather bravely if needed, when Protestants are under pressure (and now they are!).”
On its website, the SCLJ says it provides legal assistance to religious groups and individuals and mounts “court cases related to the protection of the rights of citizens and organisations to freedom of conscience and religion”.
The website’s court cases section hasn’t been updated since 2015, however. The latest case listed on the page, from 2015, relates to a dispute over the ownership of an evangelical church building in Sochi. An earlier case, from 2008, relates to a religious organisation that got in trouble for lecturing about religion at Sunday school without a licence.
Kruglikov called the photos on social media of Sergey Ryakhovsky and Vladimir Putin “very important” and “a signal to the evangelical community that times have really changed”, as throughout the history of Russia, evangelical believers “have never been so recognised by the state that the head of state would personally meet with the head of any evangelical association”.
Nikolay Mitrokhin, a researcher at University of Bremen, Germany, says the SCLJ “has been primarily representing the interests of the Protestant community of the Russian Federation and Western Protestant and post-Protestant organisations (for example, Mormons) in relations with the authorities.”
“Of course, the Ryakhovsky brothers, as lobbyists, have worked closely with the presidential administration of the Russian Federation,” Mitrokhin adds.
Anton Kruglikov, RUCEF press secretary, said the SCLJ and RUCEF “cooperate on issues of freedom of religion. Within the RUCEF there is a legal department, but its main purpose is current and preventive work. When it comes to representing the interests of evangelical believers in superior courts (including the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation), the RUCEF seeks legal assistance from well-qualified SCLJ lawyers.”
Courting the evangelicals
A few years ago, a lawyer for the US president financing a legal activist tied to the Russian president might have seemed odd. Ahead of the 2016 US elections, Sekulow published a book that denounced a supposed global conspiracy including Putin’s Russia, Iran and radical Islam.
Sekulow claimed this “unholy alliance” was an existential threat to the US and Israel and that the Obama administration at the time was failing to counter the danger. That year, the ACLJ also vowed on its website “to monitor this ever-ramifying national security situation”.
By 2017, Sekulow had become a high-profile legal crusader for Trump and echoed the president in calling the FBI investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election “a witch hunt”.
Trump and Sekulow have been openly positive about Putin, denied or discounted Moscow’s attack on the 2016 election, and belittled concerns about the threat Russia posed to the US.
Bishop Sergey Ryakhovsky “knows Jay Sekulow well and considers him one of the most competent and respected human rights defenders”, said the RUCEF press secretary.
“Their last meeting took place during the World Summit of Christian Leaders in Defense of Persecuted Christians in 2017 (hosted by the Billy Graham Evangelical Association in the US). The summit touched upon ongoing obstacles to church life and ministry in different countries of the world.”
This summit was held in a Trump hotel in Washington DC, at a cost of $400,000 paid to the president’s company. Attendees included Trump’s vice-president Mike Pence and the leaders of many other US Christian right groups spending money abroad – including Alliance Defending Freedom, which has also defended the Russian state against Pussy Riot members.
Financial controversies
Long before he became famous for his defence of Trump, Sekulow was a well-known figure on the US right, the host of his own radio show and a frequent guest on conservative media outlets.
There have been a number of controversies regarding the ACLJ’s finances. In 2005, Legal Times reported that Sekulow, with the ACLJ and a string of interconnected non-profit and for-profit entities, had “built a financial empire that generates millions of dollars a year and supports a lavish lifestyle – complete with multiple homes, chauffeur-driven cars, and a private jet that he once used to ferry Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia”.
In 2017, The Washington Post revealed that Sekulow’s “charity empire” brought in nearly $230 million in donations from 2011 to 2015 – and $28.5 million of that ended up with members of Sekulow’s family or their companies.
That year, the non-profit watchdog CharityWatch reported that the family connections and associations among the various groups in Sekulow’s charity network (which included the ACLJ) raised a “red flag”.
Sekulow, the ACLJ and SCLJ did not respond to requests for comment.
* David Corn of Mother Jones contributed reporting for this article.
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Tatev Hovhannisyan | Radio Free (2020-10-30T12:59:21+00:00) Revealed: Trump’s top lawyer funds Putin-linked religious lobbyists in Russia. Retrieved from https://www.radiofree.org/2020/10/30/revealed-trumps-top-lawyer-funds-putin-linked-religious-lobbyists-in-russia/
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