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Suppression by denomination, clergy casualties, and the escalation timeline across occupied territories.

CONTROLLING FAITH BY FORCE

Russia's Systematic Religious Persecution in Occupied Ukrainian Territories

Executive Summary

Russia's occupation of Ukrainian territories has produced the most systematic campaign of religious persecution in Europe since the Soviet era. Between 2014 and 2025, the Russian Federation has weaponised the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC/Moscow Patriarchate) as an instrument of political control, deploying it to enforce ideological conformity, legitimise military aggression, and destroy the independent religious landscape that had flourished in Ukraine since 1991. The result is the effective elimination of religious freedom across occupied Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, and Crimea oblasts, and the replacement of Ukraine's plural religious heritage with a coercive ROC monopoly.¹

This paper argues that what Russia is conducting constitutes religious persecution under international law, meeting the thresholds established by the Rome Statute and the UN Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms of Intolerance and Discrimination Based on Religion or Belief. It proceeds in three parts: (1) the scale of the documented destruction; (2) the mechanisms of persecution, from administrative prohibition to physical violence; and (3) the structural role of the ROC as an arm of Russian state power.

HEADLINE FIGURES (2014–2025)

• 630+ religious structures damaged or destroyed; ~100 completely demolished (to 2025)²
• At least 70 clergymen killed or tortured to death across all denominations³
• Over 200 clergy abducted and tortured; hundreds imprisoned or deported²
• 800–900 non-ROC communities closed or driven underground in Donbas alone²
• ~95% collapse in activity among Evangelical/Pentecostal and Baptist communities²
• 100% suppression of OCU communities; 100% suppression of Jehovah's Witnesses; 90% reduction among Seventh-day Adventists²
• 50,000–70,000 people fled occupied territories due specifically to religious persecution²
• 860 ROC structures now formally registered in occupied territories (October 2025)⁴

I. The Religious Landscape Russia Destroyed

Before 2014, Ukraine had built one of the most religiously plural societies in post-Soviet space. By the early 2010s, the country hosted approximately 35,000 registered religious organisations representing over 50 distinct denominations. In the eastern oblasts that Russia would occupy, religious diversity was particularly pronounced. Donetsk Oblast alone contained 1,797 registered religious communities representing 55 denominations, with the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate) accounting for 42% — but with a substantial Protestant presence of up to 35% in some areas, and significant Catholic and Greek Catholic communities.⁵

In Zaporizhzhia Oblast, more than 900 religious organisations across 50 denominations were active, with over 300 Protestant communities. Kherson Oblast hosted over 820 organisations, including 448 Orthodox and 220+ Protestant communities. This landscape represented the accumulated religious freedom of three decades of Ukrainian independence.⁵

What Russia Inherited — and Eliminated

The scale of suppression since 2014, accelerating dramatically after February 2022, is measurable with precision:²

• Evangelical Christians (Pentecostals): 366 registered communities in Donetsk Oblast before 2014; activity reduced by approximately 95% under occupation.
• Baptist communities: Approximately 186 communities; activity reduced by ~95%.
• Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Kyiv Patriarchate/OCU): 86 communities in occupied Donbas; activity reduced by 100%. Of 40 parishes originally present in occupied Donetsk territory, fewer than 10 survived.
• Jehovah's Witnesses: 83 communities; activity reduced by 100%, mirroring Russia's 2017 Supreme Court ban.
• Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (UGCC): 49 communities; activity reduced by ~100%. Not a single active UGCC church remained in occupied Donetsk by 2018.
• Seventh-day Adventists: ~36 communities; ~90% reduction.

In aggregate, an estimated 800–900 religious communities that operated in the Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts before 2014 were closed or driven underground during the occupation period. More than 200 raids targeting religious communities were recorded in the 2019–2021 period alone, before the full-scale invasion.⁶

II. Mechanisms of Persecution

Russia's religious persecution operates across five interlocking mechanisms: legal prohibition, administrative strangulation, physical violence against clergy, forced deportation, and property seizure. These are not isolated incidents but a coordinated system, applied with increasing intensity since February 2022.⁷

1. Legal Prohibition and Administrative Exclusion

The DPR established the legal architecture for religious monopoly as early as May 2015, when its leader Alexander Zakharchenko declared recognition for only four religious communities: Moscow Patriarchate Orthodoxy, Catholicism, Islam, and Judaism. All other communities — including the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, the OCU, Evangelical Christians, and Baptists — were classified as 'sects' and subject to repression.⁸ The LPR adopted comparable legislation in 2018.⁹

After February 2022, Russian federal law was imposed on all occupied territories, extending Russia's 2017 ban on Jehovah's Witnesses and the broader framework classifying Protestant and non-ROC communities as security threats. Registration under Russian law requires at minimum 25 local residents, a Russian-speaking leadership, and active ROC endorsement — conditions structured to be impossible for Ukrainian-identity denominations to meet.¹⁰

By summer 2023, occupation authorities in the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson oblasts had effectively banned all religious activity except that of parishes that had submitted to direct ROC jurisdiction.¹¹ The Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church was formally banned in Zaporizhzhia Oblast by December 2022.¹²

"Zareiestruiete hromadu za rosiiskym zakonodavstvom — otrymaiete svii molytovnyi budynok nazad." [Register your community under Russian law and you get your prayer house back.] — Russian occupation official to Ukrainian pastor, Zaporizhzhia Oblast.¹¹

2. Physical Violence Against Clergy

The MIPL report documents 67 clergy from various Ukrainian churches killed by Russian occupation authorities.¹³ The Eastern Human Rights Group records at least 70 clergymen killed or tortured to death across all occupied territories between 2014 and 2025, with a further 200+ abducted and subjected to torture.³ Six confirmed cases of intentional killing (excluding shelling) have been documented between 2022 and 2025, with five victims from the Orthodox Church of Ukraine and one from the Ukrainian Evangelical Christians.¹⁴

Documented Cases of Killing and Torture

• Fr Stepan Podolchak (OCU), Kalancha settlement, occupied Kherson Oblast: Russian forces broke into his home, hooded him, drove him to an undisclosed location, and shot him. His wife was called two days later to identify his body. Killed February 15, 2024, aged 59, for refusing to collaborate with occupation authorities.¹⁵
• Fr Petro Krenitsky (UGCC), Melitopol: Forcibly deported by order of the Zaporizhzhia occupation administration. FSB officers entered during morning service in plain clothes; six men in black uniforms entered the churchyard, shut the gates, and beat him to the ground. Driven to a checkpoint and told to walk toward Ukrainian-controlled territory: 'I walked and prayed, but he didn't shoot.'¹⁶
• Fr Kostyantin Maksymov (UOC, pro-Ukrainian), Berdyansk: Detained at the Chonhar checkpoint, May 2023. Held for 21 months, including Simferopol SIZO No. 2. On 2 August 2024, convicted under Art. 276 of the Russian Criminal Code (espionage) — 14 years in a strict-regime penal colony in Saratov Oblast, over 1,000 km from his home. His crime: refusing to sign a petition to join the ROC, refusing Russian citizenship, and praying in Ukrainian. Appeal rejected November 2024.¹⁷
• Fr Bohdan Gelet and Fr Ivan Levytsky (UGCC), Berdyansk: Detained November 2022. Held for 19 months. Fr Gelet has Type 1 diabetes; his insulin was withheld. In captivity he witnessed another prisoner tortured with electric shocks and forced to memorise the Russian national anthem. Both transferred through multiple detention facilities, including Horlivka Colony where Fr Levytsky lost consciousness twice from beatings.¹⁸
• Fr Khrystofor Khrimli and Fr Andriy Chui (OCU), Donetsk Oblast: Arrested after refusing re-registration under Russian law and refusing to transfer to the Moscow Patriarchate. Both transported to Russia. Charges included 'spreading shameful information against the RF,' 'praying in Ukrainian,' and failing to hold Russian passports. Held in the Russian Federation as of the time of writing.¹⁹

A further 45 clergy were abducted and later released; 20 were abducted with unknown fate; 5 killed in artillery and rocket strikes; 8 injured in bombardments.²⁰

3. Raid, Seizure, and Destruction of Property

The physical destruction of religious infrastructure proceeds simultaneously with the suppression of religious communities. More than 600 religious structures have been documented as damaged or destroyed across occupied territories between 2014 and 2025, of which approximately 60 have been completely demolished.²¹ Since 24 February 2022 alone, 630 religious structures have been damaged or destroyed; 100 completely.²⁰

• In Melitopol, the Baptist Church 'Blahodat' (founded 1906, building erected 1914) was converted into one of the occupation administration's administrative centres.²²
• In Berdyansk, the city's entire UGCC property and ecclesiastical assets were stripped following the ROC's formal annexation of the Berdyansk diocese in May 2023.²³
• In Kherson Oblast, three Baptist houses of prayer were converted into barracks.²⁰
• Occupation authorities routinely declare abandoned churches 'ownerless property' under Russian law and confiscate them, even where communities remain active underground.²⁴
• Church leaders are illegally prohibited from removing sound equipment, documents, and personal effects from seized premises.²²

The seizure of property follows a systematic legal framework. Under the occupation administration's 'simplified registration regime' operational until July 2026, properties can be transferred using documents from both DPR occupation structures and Ukrainian authorities, enabling mass redistribution to collaborators and ROC-affiliated structures.²⁵

4. Forced Deportation of Clergy

Deportation of non-ROC clergy functions both as punishment and as a mechanism of demographic cleansing of religious leadership. Fr Sviatoslav Pitersky (OCU), aged 74, was forcibly expelled from Melitopol by occupation decree because he refused to recognise the results of the 'referendum' on annexation.²⁶

The pattern is consistent: clergy are presented with a binary — accept re-registration under the ROC, accept Russian citizenship, and collaborate — or face expulsion, imprisonment, or violence. Those who refuse are systematically removed from the territory. This has produced near-total elimination of Ukrainian-identity religious leadership from the occupied oblasts.²⁷

5. Coerced Citizenship and Re-registration

A central mechanism of religious control is the linkage between religious registration and Russian citizenship. Re-registration of a community under Russian law requires the religious leader and formal founders to hold Russian citizenship. The occupation administration openly states: registration equals the return of your prayer house. Refusal means legal obliteration.²⁸

Even clergy held in detention are subjected to pressure to accept Russian citizenship — which then limits their eligibility for inclusion in prisoner exchange lists, effectively extending their captivity. This represents a deliberate use of citizenship as a tool of coercive control over religious communities.²⁹

III. The ROC as an Instrument of State

The Russian Orthodox Church cannot be understood as an independent religious institution in the context of occupied Ukraine. It functions as an arm of Russian state power, performing ideological, administrative, and military functions for the Russian government.³⁰

The 'Russian World' Doctrine

The ROC and the Russian government jointly developed the concept of 'Russkiy Mir' (Russian World), first articulated in Putin's 2007 Federal Assembly address and developed theologically by Patriarch Kirill. The doctrine holds that Russia constitutes a civilisation larger than its territorial boundaries, encompassing Ukraine and Belarus by virtue of shared Orthodox heritage rooted in the 'Kyivan baptism' — a framing that provides religious legitimacy for territorial annexation.³¹

Patriarch Kirill has formally endorsed Russia's war against Ukraine as 'sacred', personally approved the appointment of military chaplains to Russian combat units, and overseen the creation of at least four 'volunteer clergy headquarters' near the front lines as of August 2024.³² Approximately 2,000 ROC priests visited combat zones since 2022 — roughly one in 18 of all clergymen. The Russian Ministry of Defence maintains a dedicated unit for interaction with religious believers in the armed forces.³²

Approximately 250,000 military ministry actions — including baptisms, prayers, and weapons blessings — have been conducted by ROC chaplains embedded with Russian forces fighting in Ukraine since 2022.³⁸

Absorption of Ukrainian Dioceses

In occupied territories, the ROC has conducted systematic canonical absorption of Ukrainian Orthodox Church structures:³³

• 8 UOC dioceses in occupied territories now under ROC administrative control
• 3 dioceses had their episcopal leadership replaced with ROC-appointed figures
• 5 metropolitans appointed by the UOC Council remain nominally in place but in ROC administrative subordination
• 836 ROC parishes, 16 monasteries, and 8 dioceses formally registered in occupied territories (October 2025)

On 16 May 2023, violating its own canonical rules prohibiting appointment of a bishop to an already-occupied see, the ROC Synod formally annexed the Berdyansk diocese — the first instance where Moscow appointed a parallel bishop rather than converting an existing one. This act was assessed by canonical scholars as constituting an ecclesiological schism.³⁴

Soviet Historical Parallels

The methods deployed in occupied Ukraine draw directly from the Soviet playbook for destroying independent religious institutions.³⁵

• 1930s Stalinist repression: Mass arrests of Protestant clergy as 'enemies of the people'; closing of prayer houses; deportation to GULAG. In Melitopol alone in 1936–1938, leaders of the Evangelical Christian Church were arrested, tried for 'counter-revolutionary activity and espionage for Germany,' and shot in February 1938.³⁶
• Operation Sever/Troika (1951): Forced deportation of approximately 10,000 Jehovah's Witnesses to Siberia 'forever' by Council of Ministers Decree No. 667-339ss. Today's occupation authorities use identical accusations — 'extremism,' 'anti-state activity,' 'American spies' — against the same denominations in the same territories.³⁷
• Liquidation of the UGCC (1946): At the Lviv 'Pseudo-Council' ordered by Stalin, the UGCC was forcibly merged into the ROC. Metropolitan Josyp Slipyi, who refused to convert, was sentenced to eight years' imprisonment and spent over 18 years in Siberian camps. The occupation's pressure on Greek Catholic priests to transfer to the Moscow Patriarchate directly replicates this pattern.³⁵

The terminology has not changed. The words 'sectarians,' 'American spies,' 'anti-state activity,' and 'extremists' that were embedded in Soviet security consciousness are today deployed verbatim by Russian occupiers against the same denominations in the same territories.³⁵

IV. The Legal Framework: Religious Persecution Under International Law

Russia's conduct across occupied Ukrainian territories meets the definitional criteria for religious persecution under multiple instruments of international law:

Rome Statute (Article 7)

Persecution on religious grounds constitutes a crime against humanity under Article 7(1)(h) of the Rome Statute when committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack against a civilian population. The documented pattern — coordinated across multiple oblasts, sustained over eleven years, involving state policy rather than individual criminal acts — satisfies the 'widespread or systematic' threshold. The targeting of specifically identified religious groups (UGCC, OCU, Evangelical Christians, Jehovah's Witnesses) on the basis of their affiliation constitutes persecution on religious and political grounds.³⁹

UN Declaration on Religious Intolerance (1981)

Articles 1 (freedom of religion), 6 (freedom to maintain religious institutions and property), and 8 (no limitation on rights beyond those prescribed by law) are violated systematically. The destruction of prayer houses, prohibition of worship, forced conversion to ROC jurisdiction, and killing of clergy constitute violations across the full range of protected rights.⁴⁰

The European Convention on Human Rights (Articles 9 and 14)

Russia's derogation from the ECHR does not extend to the absolute core of Article 9 (freedom of thought, conscience, and religion). The structuring of administrative law to make non-ROC religious practice legally impossible constitutes an interference neither necessary nor proportionate in a democratic society — and represents discrimination on religious grounds under Article 14.⁴¹

V. Conclusions and Implications

The pattern documented in this paper is not a series of isolated incidents. It is the coordinated implementation of a state doctrine — Russkiy Mir — that assigns religious belonging to political loyalty and uses the Russian Orthodox Church as the enforcement mechanism for that equation. The destruction of Ukraine's plural religious landscape in occupied territories is inseparable from Russia's broader project of destroying Ukrainian identity.⁴²

The ROC is a state actor, not a religious institution

Policy frameworks treating the ROC as an independent religious body misread its structural role. The ROC's appointment of military chaplains, its advocacy for the 'sacredness' of war, and its administrative absorption of Ukrainian dioceses render it functionally indistinguishable from an instrument of occupation governance. Sanctions regimes should reflect this: the ROC's senior leadership should be treated as state officials rather than as religious leaders entitled to protection.⁴³

The destruction of religious institutions is a leading indicator of demographic replacement

Field intelligence from the TOT Insights Hub documents the construction of a 'Patriot' military-cultural complex on the site of the former children's camp Orlyonok in Mariupol, and of a new Russian Orthodox gymnasium in occupied Zaporizhzhia. The systematic replacement of Ukrainian religious infrastructure with Russian military-patriotic and ROC-aligned institutions is part of a documented demographic replacement programme, not incidental destruction.⁴⁴

Documentation of individual cases is essential for accountability

The cases documented here — Fr Maksymov's 14-year sentence, Fr Krenitsky's deportation, Fr Podolchak's killing — are not anecdotes. They are evidence. The systematic nature of the pattern they represent is the basis for prosecution under both the Rome Statute and Ukrainian domestic law. The TOT Insights Hub's catalogue, combined with the Eastern Human Rights Group's named individual database (800 documented individuals), constitutes a growing evidentiary record.⁴⁵