Russia's government persecutes Christians in occupied Ukraine, experts testify to US lawmakers

(OSV News) -- Russia's government is systematically persecuting Christian and other faith communities in occupied regions of Ukraine, experts told U.S. lawmakers.

"My parents lived through the Soviet Union, and they say conditions today in Russian-occupied Ukraine are worse for believers than they were in Soviet times," said Mark Sergeev, a Ukrainian military chaplain and worship leader who served as youth pastor of Melitopol Christian Church until that city's seizure by Russian troops.

Sergeev testified about his own experiences fleeing Russian persecution July 24 before the U.S. Helsinki Commission in Washington. Also known as the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, the independent federal commission was founded in 1976 to uphold the principles of the nonbinding 1975 Helsinki Accords, which sought to ease Cold War tensions through acceptance of the post-World War II order in Europe.

Joining Sergeev in testifying before the commission were Catherine Wanner, professor of history, anthropology and religious studies at Pennsylvania State University and a specialist on religion in Soviet and post-Soviet Ukraine; and Steven E. Moore, a former chief of staff in the U.S. House of Representatives and founder of the Ukraine Freedom Project, a nongovernmental organization bringing humanitarian aid to the front lines of Russia's war in Ukraine.

Moore also launched the website RussiaTorturesChristians.org to highlight persecution of Christians in Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine.

Sergeev -- whose great-grandfather was killed for his faith under Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin -- recounted to the commission how in March 2022 he was pulled from his house by Russian troops.

"They take me outside, put me on the ground. I was only in my underwear (in) that moment," he said. "They wake up my oldest son. He's 9 years old ... (with) an AK-47 gun in the face."

Sergeev said his father, the church's senior pastor, was given 72 hours by the soldiers "to record a video in the front of the church building (saying) that this is already Russian territory, and Putin is our president."

The soldiers threatened that for every day his father delayed in making the video, they would cut off one of his fingers.

Sergeev told the commission it was "God's miracle that (the Russian soldiers) did not come back with their knives" -- but the troops took over the church building, tearing down the 40-foot cross in front of it and installing a Russian flag.

Once a place "used (for) ... praising and worshiping God," the former church is now a hall "for Russian military concerts and celebrating Russian holidays," said Sergeev, who escaped with his family to safety.

Other religious leaders have not been as fortunate: Wanner told the commission that since 2022 -- when Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, continuing attacks begun in 2014 -- "over 40 clergy have faced reprisals and five have been killed."

Similarly, Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk, head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, said in a June 25 interview with media outlet Ukrinform that "there is not a single Catholic priest in the occupied territories today -- either Greek Catholic or Roman Catholic," with Russian forces destroying or appropriating churches, while driving out clergy.

Two Ukrainian Greek Catholic priests, Redemptorist Father Ivan Levitsky and Father Bohdan Geleta, were released from a year and a half of Russian captivity June 28, having been seized by Russian forces from their church in Berdyansk in November 2022. Both priests, who had lost significant weight during their imprisonment, had been subjected to torture, according to Major Archbishop Shevchuk.

In the same interview, he also noted that Russian officials in the occupied portion of Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia region formally banned the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church by written decree, as well as the Knights of Columbus and Caritas Ukraine, part of the universal church's Caritas Internationalis global network of humanitarian aid organizations.

Wanner told the commission that Ukraine's religious demographics -- which include Orthodox, Catholic, Protestant, Muslim and Jewish communities -- reflect the nation's "tolerance, religious diversity and religious pluralism as governing principles," with religious symbols and practices "broadly accepted in public institutions and public space."

Orthodox believers in Ukraine themselves span a number of churches. Lilia Kovalyk-Vasyuta, chief editor of Religious Information Service of Ukraine, previously clarified to OSV News that such churches include the Ukrainian Orthodox Church-Moscow Patriarchate, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church-Kyiv Patriarchate and the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (formally recognized as independent in 2019 by Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople), as well as the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church, the Autonomous Ukrainian Orthodox Church and the Ukrainian True Orthodox Church.

But that diversity "clashes with the imposition of the Russian world ideology that comes with Russian rule," said Wanner during her commission testimony.

Such an ideology -- which holds that Russia is a superior civilization entitled to expand at will, since it claims to safeguard conservative values and Orthodox Christianity -- "justifies the repression of religious minorities and privileges Russian orthodoxy as a state-protected guardian of these traditional values of public morality and social and political order," said Wanner.

Moore, who has spent most of his time in Ukraine since the full-scale invasion, 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."

He noted the Russian Orthodox Church's Patriarch Kirill had "recently declared a holy war on Ukraine and the West" in a decree issued during a March 27-28 congress of the World Russian People's Council.

Moore also explained that Patriarch Kirill had earlier "promised that Russians who died fighting Ukraine will have all their sins washed away," referencing comments the patriarch made in a September 2022 Sunday sermon.

"The strategy of creating martyrs is much the same as (that of) ISIS," said Moore, referring to the Islamic State group, an Islamic militant organization that once took over large swaths of Syria and Iraq and has perpetrated terror attacks worldwide.

Moore recounted several cases of Ukrainian pastors being beaten and tortured by Russian agents and officials, stressing that "most Ukrainian Christians can't speak out," even when abroad, as their family members are threatened with violence by Russian officials.

He also alerted commission members to Russia's efforts to obscure such persecution through disinformation campaigns targeting conservative Christians in the U.S., and claiming that Ukraine is repressing Christians -- especially as Ukraine has successfully investigated several Ukrainian Orthodox Church clergy with longstanding ties to the Russian Orthodox Church who have reported to Russia on Ukraine's military positions and distributed Russian propaganda to destabilize security.

"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 its president, Vladimir Putin, must be held accountable for their numerous war crimes in Ukraine," Wanner told the commission, "so that they will be deterred from further attempts to use religion to inspire violence and ... justify repression of religious minorities as they are doing in the occupied territories of Ukraine."