Ukraine Steps Up U.S. Lobbying Campaign

“This war isn’t going to end until Russia realizes we are serious about going after its energy sector,” said Daniel Vajdich, president of Yorktown Solutions, which has lobbied since 2017 for the Ukrainian energy federation.

Before Russia’s invasion, Ukraine’s small but persistent U.S. influence operation was trained mostly on stopping Russia’s Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline to Germany, saying in effect that it would make it easier for Russia to ride roughshod over Ukraine, according to documents filed under the Justice Department’s Foreign Agents Registration Act. Ukraine’s lobbyists said they couldn’t persuade the Biden administration at the time.

Now, the war—and President

Volodymyr Zelensky’s

courting of global leaders and public opinion—is helping advocates make their case that curbing Russia’s energy sector is key to changing Russian President

Vladimir Putin’s

aggression toward Ukraine.

The idea of banking sanctions has the support of Sen.

Pat Toomey

(R., Pa.), the senior Republican on the Senate Banking Committee.

Mr. Toomey, in a Feb. 24 statement, called for the U.S. to “force the world to choose between doing business with Russia or the United States.” Senate Republicans, led by Sen.

Jim Risch

(R., Idaho), the senior Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, introduced a bill on Feb. 15 on the secondary sanctions on banks.

Senate Banking Chairman

Sherrod Brown

(D., Ohio) “supports the president’s efforts, working with allies world-wide, to aggressively use sanctions authorities to cripple Russia’s banking and finance sectors,” his office said in a statement. Mr. Brown’s aides didn’t respond directly to a question about whether Democrats support Mr. Risch’s bill.

Ukraine’s energy lobbyists said their advocacy on sanctions directly relates to the country’s economic well-being and national security, a case they said they are making to Congress and the administration. “The only thing that the Kremlin understands is energy,” Mr. Vajdich said.

The Ukrainian energy trade group accounted for almost two-thirds of the roughly $2 million in Ukrainian U.S. lobbying last year, according to FARA documents. Most countries spend far more. Russia spent $35 million last year on U.S. lobbying, the filings show.

Before the war, Ukraine’s lobbyists sometimes faced challenges over the country’s role in U.S. political controversies during the Trump administration.

President Biden’s run for the White House resurfaced questions about his son

Hunter Biden’s

stint on the board of a private gas company, Burisma Group, during Mr. Biden’s vice-presidential term. Mr. Biden made several trips to Ukraine as vice president for the Obama administration to press Kyiv’s government to root out corruption, and called for the ouster of former prosecutor general

Viktor Shokin,

who had investigated Burisma.

Rudy Giuliani,

an adviser to former President

Donald Trump,

said Mr. Biden’s anticorruption effort was designed to protect his son. Mr. Biden said he did nothing wrong, and Ukrainian officials said at the time they found no evidence of wrongdoing by either Mr. Biden or his son.

Mr. Trump’s first impeachment revolved around a July 2019 phone call with Mr. Zelensky in which Mr. Trump asked the Ukrainian president to investigate Hunter Biden. The request coincided with—but wasn’t explicitly linked to—a decision by Mr. Trump to temporarily withhold military aid to Ukraine. Mr. Trump was impeached by the House in late 2019 and acquitted by the Senate in early 2020.

“We weren’t quite radioactive, but there was a stigma,” said one of the lobbyists about trying to meet with U.S. lawmakers in either political party.

Over the past few years, Ukraine’s energy lobbyists racked up tens of thousands of contacts, most of them emails, with government officials, journalists and think tanks, according to a FARA filing analysis by the nonpartisan Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.

Their case, according to documents and interviews: The Nord Stream 2 pipeline threatens Ukraine’s national security by allowing Russia to circumvent overland routes through Ukraine to export natural gas to Germany—eliminating the need for Russia to stay on friendly terms with Ukraine.

After the lobbying campaign began in 2017, the U.S. Congress approved sanctions related to Nord Stream 2 in bipartisan votes in 2019 and 2020. U.S. posture changed under the Biden administration, and in May, the administration waived the penalties Congress had sought.

“Today’s actions demonstrate the administration’s commitment to energy security in Europe, consistent with the president’s pledge to rebuild relationships with our allies and partners in Europe,” Secretary of State

Antony Blinken

said in a statement at the time. That move cleared a hurdle for completion of a project that U.S. officials said would increase Moscow’s influence in Europe.

Mr. Vajdich said the administration sought to “park Russia and Ukraine and saw the real irritant as China.” Another Ukraine lobbyist said the administration conveyed a similar view about the need to focus on China.

That reprise changed the dynamics on Capitol Hill. Key Democrats, including Sens. Jeanne Shaheen (D., N.H.) and

Robert Menendez

(D., N.J.), who backed earlier legislation on sanctions, withdrew their support.

Mr. Vajdich previously worked as a top campaign aide to Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas). Another Yorktown lobbyist, Brittany Beaulieu, previously worked for Mr. Menendez, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

In January, a bill to reimpose sanctions sponsored by Mr. Cruz won the support of 55 senators but failed to reach the 60-vote threshold needed to overcome a potential filibuster and win passage.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February prompted Germany to suspend the pipeline project, and the Biden administration followed up by imposing sanctions.

Ukraine’s international status as a war-torn country defending Western democracy has opened doors in the U.S. that the lobbyists say they couldn’t.

Mr. Zelensky, a 44-year-old former comedian and actor, has quickly rallied support for his battered country, pleading with nations around the world to lend their support.

“He obviously benefits from being someone who knows how to create a compelling story,” said Brett Bruen, president of the international consulting firm Global Situation Room and a former National Security Council staffer. “Lobbyists could get in the way of that or dilute it.”

Wherever he has appeared by video, Mr. Zelensky has worked to make the conflict personal. In a virtual address to Germany’s Bundestag on Thursday, Mr. Zelensky asked Germany to help tear down the “wall” that Russia is building between Western and Eastern Europe.

He told the U.S. Congress last week that the attacks on his country were akin to those on Pearl Harbor in 1941 or on Sept. 11, 2001. He evoked the wartime words of Winston Churchill when appealing to the U.K. Parliament.

Ukraine’s ambassador to the U.S.,

Oksana Markarova,

also has captivated Washington since her arrival last April, Ukraine lobbyists said.

“Lobbyists are no substitute for official diplomacy,” Mr. Vajdich said. “There’s been a sea change in terms of our ability to get stuff done since she got here. We swim in her wake.”

The Ukrainian Embassy in Washington didn’t respond to questions about the country’s U.S. lobbying presence.

Other longer-term lobbyists for Ukraine include Andrew Mac, a partner at Ukrainian law firm Asters. Mr. Mac said his parents are from western Ukraine, that he received his law degree from Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn., and in 2002 went to work as a lawyer in Kyiv.

Mr. Mac relocated to Washington in 2011 and is head of Asters’ office there. A few months after Mr. Zelensky took office in May 2019, Mr. Mac registered under FARA as a foreign agent for him. He said his lobbying work is “not relevant in light of what the Ukrainian people are sacrificing.”

In addition to registered lobbying, Ukrainian billionaire Victor Pinchuck’s foundation contributes between $250,000 and $500,000 each year to the Atlantic Council. The Washington think tank, of which Mr. Pinchuck is a board member, focuses on the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. The Atlantic Council publishes a “UkraineAlert” website that urges a tougher approach to Russia.

Write to Julie Bykowicz at julie.bykowicz@wsj.com and Vivian Salama at vivian.salama@wsj.com