Evangelicals in Ukraine do not favor a peace agreement that grants territory to Russia, as the Russian military already seeks to end the evangelical presence in areas it controls, according to sources from Ukraine.
“For evangelical people in Ukraine, it is not only important to achieve peace for themselves only – they want to achieve peace and freedom for their brothers and sisters in the regions under Russian control,” Dr. Maksym Vasin of the Institute for Religious Freedom, based in Kyiv, told Christian Daily International. “That’s why it will be not a perfect deal, a peaceful deal, if thousands of evangelical Christians will continue to be persecuted under Russian authority for years.”
The desire of the people of Ukraine is that all Ukrainian territory will be liberated, Vasin said in an interview with CDI at the International Religious Freedom Summit in Washington, D.C. on Feb. 4.
“It is obvious that if Russia maintains the control on some parts of the Ukraine territory, there will be a lot of atrocities, religious persecution, primarily against evangelical believers,” Vasin said. “And each year it’ll be worse and worse. That’s why I want to believe that the whole territory will be liberated from Russia – it is the way to restore religious freedom in this region.”
It is important to liberate all territories of Ukraine and pressure Russia to stop deliberate religious persecution, employing such measures as designating it a state sponsor of terrorism, with accompanying significant sanctions, Vasin said.
“It is the only tool we can see to force Russia to stop such significant violence against all Ukrainian believers,” he said.
With the support of the Russian Orthodox Church, the Russian military that has fought for Ukrainian territory since 2014 seeks to end the presence of all evangelical Christianity in the country that it then openly invaded in 2022, according to the Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights.
Dmytro Lubinets told a briefing and reception at the IRF Summit that Christian leaders in Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine, including Pentecostals, Baptists and Seventh-day Adventists, have become targets of the Russian army.
“The Russian military has threatened the total physical elimination of all evangelical believers, calling them American spies,” Lubinets said. “We even found official documents for closing churches, and it’s absolutely the same that were used by Soviet Union.”
Among the first things Russian occupiers do when capturing Ukrainian cities is to destroy all church buildings, he said.
“Russia started aggression against my country from 2014, and as a result, now we know that 67 religious leaders were killed by Russians, with more than 65 now in Russian captivity, at least,” Lubinets said, adding that there are likely more, but that war conditions keep researchers from discovering them.
Russia has created a special array of torture and pressure methods for Ukrainian people in occupied territories, along with undertaking arrests, committing rapes and threatening murder – soldiers simulate executions of family members to terrorize Christians, Lubinets said.
“Over a year and a half, religious figures were subjected to torture and inhumane treatment, kept in prisons and torture chambers,” he said. “I spoke with them, and when I heard the conditions, the tortures, it was absolutely horrible.”
Thousands of Ukrainian civilians, including religious leaders, remain in Russian captivity, many of them suffering torture that sometimes leads to death, he said.
“So please, dear friends, dear colleagues, we need to unite our efforts to stop this aggression not only against Ukraine, not only against Ukrainian churches – this aggression against all religious believers of all the world,” Lubinets said.
Last year Ihor Novosilsky, a priest of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) – despite the UOC being aligned with the Russian Orthodox Church and the Russian military – endured arbitrary arrest, torture and illegal imprisonment for 262 days, according to a report released at the summit by Vasin of the Institute for Religious Freedom and Mykhailo Brytsyn of Mission Eurasia.
“This occurred because he refused to comply with the demands of the Russian authorities in the Kherson Region to renounce the Ukrainian language and subordinate himself to the Russian Orthodox Church,” stated the report, entitled, “Faith Under Russian Terror: Analysis of the Religious Situation in Ukraine.”
Following the Russian military’s destruction, damage or looting in 2022 and 2023 of at least 630 religious sites in Ukraine, the report cited an additional 650 such sites damaged and destroyed in 2024 as Russia intensified airstrikes on civilian infrastructure across various Ukraine and conducted ground offensives in the east.
“During August and September alone, more than 10 churches and religious buildings were damaged as a result of Russian aggression,” the report stated.
The occupying Russian authorities also seized church buildings, prayer houses and other properties from Christians.
“At times, these repressive actions by Russian security forces against Ukrainian religious communities are initiated and supported by representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church,” the report noted. “For instance, on April 28 in the village of Oleksandrivka in the Skadovsk Region of the Kherson Region, during Holy Week before Easter the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) not only seized a church belonging to the UGCC [Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church] but also committed sacrilege by ‘reconsecrating’ it.”
The Russian Orthodox Church, in cooperation with occupation authorities, continued to dismantle parishes of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU) in Crimea, under Russian occupation since 2014, the report stated.
“By 2023, only 11 of the original 45 OCU parishes remained in Crimea. However, during 2024, Russian authorities deprived the OCU of its remaining churches, leaving it without any properties for ownership or use,” the report noted.
Russian occupiers force Christians from different denominations into a single local church overseen by a single individual loyal to the authorities, according to the report.
“The current Russian repressions are reminiscent of Soviet-era practices, where the communist regime first banned churches, deprived them of their buildings and experienced clergy, and then forced religious communities to reregister under new rules, complying with the demands of godless authorities,” the report stated. It cited one Christian as telling, “People are terrified during worship services. It is forbidden to talk about the persecution of believers, the closure of churches, and similar issues.”
An official with the Ukrainian president’s Office for Religious and Humanitarian Issues, Elena Alka, told the IRS Summit briefing that Ukrainians will fight occupation because their faith and God demand it.
“The freedom and religious liberties we have won in the past should not be given up only because a fascist leader has decided to invade the country,” she said. “If we give up our land as many are calling for, we are essentially abandoning our presence and Christ, we’ll give up our religious freedom. Remember us. We remember you. Pray for us as we pray for you.”
