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Christian persecution is systematic in Russian-occupied Ukraine, the US Helsinki Commission heard in Washington last week.
Russia’s government also persecutes other faith communities in the war-torn country.
Desecration, violence
Ukrainian military chaplain Mark Sergeev was a youth pastor until Russian troops seized his home town.
Sergeev said that Russian troops terrorised him and his nine-year old son, while forcing his father on pain of torture to make a video in front of the church saying “this is already Russian territory and Putin is our president”.
Russian troops took over the church, tore down its 12-metre cross and replaced it with the Russian flag. The church is now used for troops’ social events.
Clergy targeted
Professor Catherine Wanner from Pennsylvania State University is a specialist on religion in Soviet and post-Soviet Ukraine.
Religious persecution has been part of the war since its outset in 2022, she said.
She told the Commission that since 2022 “over 40 clergy have faced reprisals and five have been killed”.
The Ukraine’s broad religious diversity “clashes with the imposition of the Russian world ideology that comes with Russian rule” she explained.
Testimony about religious persecution given by Steven Moore, a former chief of staff in the US House of Representatives and humanitarian aid facilitator, lined up with Wanner’s.
He has spent a significant period in Ukraine since the war started and recounted several cases of Ukrainian pastors being beaten and tortured by Russian agents and officials.
“Most Ukrainian Christians can’t speak out” – even overseas – for fear of reprisals on families, he told the Commission.
Rumours gaining credence
Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk, head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church made similar claims to Wanner, Moore and Sergeev in a June 25 media interview.
There are no Greek Catholic or Roman Catholic priests in the occupied territories, he said.
Russian forces are destroying or appropriating churches while driving out clergy and banning Catholic organisations, including Caritas.
Russian Orthodox and Kremlin partnership
Moore told the Commission that the Russian Orthodox Church “is not a church as we would think of one, but it’s a working arm of the Kremlin”.
“Prominent members of the media and even some members of Congress continue to tell Americans that the Ukrainian government persecutes Christians” said Moore.
Russia and President Vladimir Putin must be held accountable for their numerous war crimes so that they will be deterred from further attempts to use religion to inspire violence and justify repressing religious minorities.
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