According to human rights activists, during the full-scale invasion, representatives of the occupation forces killed four clergymen, while twenty others went missing.
DW tells about the persecutions Ukrainian churches suffer under Russian occupation.
At the end of June, two UGCC priests, Ivan Levytsky and Bohdan Geleta, were returned from Russian captivity.
At the same time, in June, in Melitopol (which also was occupied in 2022), the trial of a UOC priest from Tokmak, Fr. Konstantyn Maksymov, began. "He is also a volunteer and went on humanitarian missions," says the Director of the Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, Yevhen Zakharov. "During one of these missions in 2023, he was arrested and accused of espionage, which sounds like pure nonsense."
According to the Norwegian human rights organization Forum 18, the criminal case file opened by the occupation authorities states that Maksymov "used an Internet messenger to transfer information to a Ukrainian security service officer with the coordinates of the location of Russian air defense equipment located in the city and district."
Two priests of the OCU from the occupied Donetsk region, Fr. Christopher Khrimli from Kamianka and Fr. Andriy Chui from Donetsk, also stood before Russian courts. According to the bishop of the OCU, Metropolitan Serhiy Horobtsov of Donetsk and Mariupol, they were tried illegally. According to him, the priests refused to cooperate with the occupation authorities, and so they were arrested and accused of pro-Ukrainian activities in the fall of 2023. At the beginning of this year, representatives of the Russian Federation deported first Khrimli and then Chui to Georgia. "We managed to bring them back, and now they serve on the territory of the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra in Kyiv, in the Feodosievsky Monastery," adds Metropolitan Serhiy.
According to the Kharkiv Human Rights Prorection Group, 20 clergymen went missing in the occupied territories during the full-scale invasion. Six of them have already been released. "As it turned out, all of them were tortured and pressured to admit that they worked for the SBU," adds the director of the KHRPG, Yevhen Zakharov. Among those released from captivity is Vasyl Vyrozub, a clergyman of the Odesa diocese of the OCU and rector of the Holy Trinity parish in Odesa. He was detained on his way to Zmiinyi (Snake) Island, where he went on the second day of the full-scale invasion aboard the search and rescue vessel Sapfir. The crew's mission was to rescue civilian lighthouse keepers on Zmiinyi Island and return the bodies of Ukrainian border guards who were presumed dead.
The Russians searched the vessel and interrogated the crew, promising to release them "after the end of the SVO". The detainees were first held in Sevastopol, and later, along with other prisoners, in Shebekino and Stary Oskol in the Belgorod region. "They would beat and torture us just because they could, just for fun. I witnessed men's genitals being mutilated, heads being chopped off. It was hell on earth," says Vyrozub.
In total, the cleric was held in Russian captivity for more than two months and was released during an exchange in early May 2022. He recalls that during interrogations, he was asked the same question: in which department of the SBU do you work? The priest claims that he has no connection with the Ukrainian special services.
The Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group is also aware of four cases of intentional murder of OCU clergy. One of the cases was reported by the Norwegian human rights organization Forum 18. According to the information provided, in February of this year, representatives of the Russian troops detained Fr. Stepan Podolchak in the village of Kalanchak in the occupied part of the Kherson region. "They took him barefoot, with a bag over his head, insisting that they were taking him for interrogation. His battered body, possibly with a bullet wound to the head, was found on the street of the village on February 15," human rights activists say in their material.
Currently, Ukrainian churches do not conduct services in the Russian-occupied territories, Zakharov says. First of all, because they do not have the premises to do so. The Russians either give the premises to the Moscow Patriarchate or use them for their own needs. For example, in the church of the OCU in the Novoazovsk district of Donetsk region, the Russians set up a morgue for their dead soldiers, says Metropolitan Serhiy Horobtsov of Donetsk and Mariupol. And in the House of Mercy in the Telmanivsky district, they have set up a military base.
"In Volnovakha, we had a church of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker built of wood," continues Horobtsov. "When the Russians entered, they first took out Ukrainian icons and embroidered towels, then poured diesel fuel on everything and set it all on fire. Then, they shot the domes with under-barrel grenade launchers."
KHКPG has documented 400 destroyed churches. "Churches of the UOC-MP suffer the most, as their number is the biggest in the south and east," adds Zakharov. "Destruction of church buildings is a war crime, as defined in the Rome Statute."
Visiting churches in the occupied territories is dangerous for the believers too. The human rights organization Forum 18 cites the story of a Protestant woman who has been under arrest by the occupation authorities in the Zaporizhzhia region since the beginning of this year. "She is being persecuted for statements she allegedly made at a prayer meeting in a house in occupied Melitopol in July 2023," human rights activists say in their material. The Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation opened a criminal case against the woman under the article on "public dissemination of deliberately false information about the use of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation under the guise of plausible statements."
A priest of the OCU church, who asked not to be named for security reasons, remains in a village in the occupied part of the Kherson region. Since the beginning of the occupation, he has survived eight searches, a ban on serving in his church, and was held in a Russian torture chamber for a week. "One time, 40 people came in four buses. Another time they came with mine detectors, looking for weapons and explosives," says the priest. "During interrogations, they kept demanding that I join the Moscow Patriarchate. I categorically refused. They then asked me who my curator was in Ukraine. I pointed my finger to the sky and said that my curator was there."
In addition, the representatives of the occupation authorities put pressure on the Muslim clergy, said the director of the KHRPG, Yevhen Zakharov. "They oppressed mosque communities that refused to join the Russian-controlled Islamic structures," adds the human rights activist. "In general, we can say that the persecution of churches, regardless of the type of parish, is a characteristic element of the occupation policy of the Russian authorities.