Tabach delivers a personal, faith-tinged testimony about why he has spent years helping in Ukraine. He says he is not deeply religious, but a simple “Pray for Ukraine” note pushed him to act, and he went to Ukraine intending to stay only one day to evacuate a wounded soldier — then ended up remaining for more than a decade because it felt morally unavoidable. He frames Russia’s actions in Ukraine as deliberate “evil,” and admits people often question him for helping a country that is not his birthplace, saying his only honest answer is that saving lives is “the right thing to do.”
He then pivots to leadership and politics, describing how he felt encouraged when Donald Trump became president because he believed Trump was “fighting evil,” discouraged when Trump left office, and newly urgent when Trump returned, calling it a “third choice” that must not be wasted. Tabach recounts attending inauguration events where he first noticed a powerful speaker he identifies as Pastor Burns, whom he later unexpectedly encounters in wartime Ukraine. Seeing Burns visit atrocity sites and speak privately with civilians “before cameras,” Tabach says, convinced him the leadership was sincere rather than performative.
The speech builds to a call for unity: Tabach argues that different communities share a common history of being victimized by “evil,” and that leaders and ordinary people alike have a duty not to stand by while others suffer. He urges the audience to rally around political and spiritual leaders he names — including Trump, Ukraine’s chief rabbi, and Pastor Burns — and he reinforces the message with a well-known warning that evil wins when good people do nothing and with a quote attributed to Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko about fighting and prevailing. To close, he presents a symbolic gift — a Ukrainian Cossack-style saber — as a token of solidarity, and asks the audience to pray for a man he says is being considered for a senior U.S. role related to Ukraine.
New York Independent News
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