Invaders engaged in religious persecution on Ukraine’s occupied territory – ISW

Russian occupation authorities are likely conducting a campaign of systematic religious persecution in occupied Ukraine, since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 Russian soldiers or occupations authorities have reportedly committed at least 76 acts of religious persecution in Ukraine, according to the report of the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) for April 9.

“Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 Russian soldiers or occupations authorities have reportedly committed at least 76 acts of religious persecution in Ukraine. Russian authorities have closed, nationalized, or forcefully converted at least 26 places of worship to the Kremlin-controlled Russian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate, killed or seized at least 29 clergy or religious leaders, and looted, desecrated, or deliberately destroyed at least 13 places of worship in occupied Ukraine,” the message posted on the website reads.

The western analysts believe that these cases of religious repression are not likely isolated incidents but rather part of a deliberate campaign to systematically eradicate “undesirable” religious organizations in Ukraine and promote the Moscow Patriarchate.

The Russian occupation authorities systematically export their state policy of suppressing religious freedom to the temporarily occupied territory of Ukraine, ensuring compliance with Russian federal laws.

It is noted that in 2021, the Prosecutor General's Office of the Russian Federation declared four groups of evangelical Christians from Latvia and Ukraine "undesirable" organizations, thereby effectively banning these organizations in the Russian Federation.

In August 2022, the occupation authorities in the temporarily occupied Melitopol of Zaporizhia region raided the house of a Ukrainian evangelical pastor and accused him of having links with the same undesirable organizations that were banned in Russia in 2021.

“Russian occupation officials have been repressing Ukrainian religious communities in proxy republics in eastern Ukraine and in illegally occupied Crimea since 2014,” the message reads.

The ISW analysts believe that Moscow’s religious persecution campaign seeks “to eradicate the Autocephalous (independent) Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU), which Moscow views as schismatic despite the decision by the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople in 2019 granting the Ukrainian Orthodox Church its independence from the Moscow Patriarchate. ”

In addition, the Russian occupation authorities are probably systematically liquidating the churches of the OCU in occupied Ukraine.

“ISW’s research found that 34 percent of the reported persecution events targeted the OCU, making it the single most targeted religious group. The high percentage of persecution events aimed at the OCU is not surprising on the one hand because it is the most popular confession in Ukraine. It is surprising on the other hand because the Kremlin has been posturing as the defender of Christianity in general and Eastern Orthodoxy in particular,” the message reads.

According to the reports of witnesses, it is likely that the Russian authorities are persecuting the OCU for its Ukrainian origin.

“The Russians pursued such targeted attacks on the OCU even during the short-lived Russian partial occupation of Kyiv Oblast early in the war, suggesting that this targeting was an intentional component of the Russian invasion from the outset,” the message says.