Putin’s persecution in Ukraine

Russia is fighting a war against churches. Voice of America reports that since Russia’s (second) invasion of Ukraine at the end of February 2022, 39 pastors, priests, and monks have been killed. Time magazine similarly reports that more than 100 clergy have been arrested, imprisoned, interrogated, or expelled, with more than 600 churches and other houses of worship destroyed. According to Time, the Russians target evangelicals disproportionally, especially Ukraine’s influential Baptist minority. In the words of a PBS journalist, “All across Russian-occupied Ukraine, soldiers are shutting down places of worship that don’t fit the world Vladimir Putin wants to build.”

Putin’s persecution is particularly brutal in the areas of Ukraine under Russian control, and the statistics, though shocking, are not surprising. Russia’s president has built his political power structure within his country on a close alliance between his nationalistic political agenda and the Russian Orthodox Church. Putin’s goal is to restore Russia’s former glory as a grand empire and world superpower, and his nationalistic and ethnic aims are reinforced and enhanced by association with Russia’s national church.

This has led to severe repression within Russia for those outside Orthodoxy. The state secret police target evangelical leaders for arrest, they apprehend people who evangelize for any faith besides the Russian Orthodox Church, they designate certain non-Russian churches as “undesirable,” and they have banned a particular Bible translation used by Jehovah’s Witnesses as “extremist.”

In his brutal monopolistic mission, Putin has found willing collaborators in the leadership of the Russian Orthodox Church itself. Metropolitan Kirill, patriarch of Moscow and de facto head of Orthodoxy in Russia, has promised soldiers that death in battle “washes away all the sins that a person has committed.” Meanwhile, Metropolitan Tikhon, the man rumored to serve as Putin’s personal chaplain, was made head of the Russian Orthodox Church’s Crimean Diocese a year ago, Crimea being the region conquered by Russia from Ukraine in 2014.

This interweaving of Russia’s politics, church, and military has led to a clear policy in the Russia-controlled areas of Ukraine: Wipe out anything that is not the Russian Orthodox Church. For the church, this employs the power of the state to smash the competition. For Putin and the military, not only does it reinforce nationalist goals and keep an important ally happy, but it allows them to attack organizations and institutions regarded as fronts for America. As one Ukrainian pastor put it, the occupying forces “thought and spoke like this: You are the American faith, the Americans are our enemies, the enemies must be destroyed.”

Time proclaimed it “Russia’s War Against Evangelicals.” Well, some American evangelicals have a new strategy to fight back on behalf of their brethren abroad. The Washington Post reported earlier this month that these evangelicals are seen as the key to keeping House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and potentially even former President Donald Trump, should he serve a second term, on board with at least some continued support for Ukraine.

According to Defenders of Faith and Religious Freedom in Ukraine, “Ukraine is the Bible Belt of Eastern Europe, with more than a thousand-year Christian history and an 85 percent Christian population. Christians must not watch passively while our brothers and sisters in Ukraine are being harassed, intimidated, persecuted, imprisoned, tortured, and murdered simply for practicing their faith.”

American conservatives of faith and goodwill can thoughtfully disagree about whether more governmental aid to Ukraine is the right policy. But we should all be able to agree with a letter written by a coalition of pastors and faith leaders, which says, “Ukrainian Christians deserve the freedom to worship in peace and embrace their faith without fear.”

If America is going to continue to provide aid for Ukrainians, we should also see our government engaging specifically on the religious freedom issues at stake. The secretary of state, the commissioners on the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, the U.S. ambassador at large for international religious freedom, and their counterparts in other nations and at the United Nations can all focus their attention—and the attention of the world’s media—on the persecution of Christians by the Russians. Indeed, this could be a moment of convergence when conservatives concerned about religious persecution of Christians and liberals who support strong international human rights norms can agree to target Putin’s misdeeds.