One of the conditions for “peace” for Ukraine, in programs that sometimes run to 28 points, sometimes 20 — written either in Russia or in the United States — is the mandatory preservation of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate. It is placed on the same level as resource-rich and “strategic” territories and the Russian language. Why such attention to a religious organization? The answer to this question is provided, among other things, by the analytical report “Controlling Faith by Force. How the Russian Federation Imposes Its Ideology Using the Russian Orthodox Church and Persecutes Christians in the Temporarily Occupied Regions of Ukraine.”
This report was recently presented at the Osvitoria Hub in the capital. The study’s conclusion is that the actions of the Russian occupiers in the occupied territories of Ukraine constitute a systematic ideological and physical destruction of religious freedom and Ukrainian religious heritage. Moreover, the Russian Orthodox Church performs the function of an instrument of totalitarian control and violence over Ukrainian citizens.
It can be assumed that the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, affiliated with the Russian Orthodox Church, serves as an internal assistant to this “instrument.” After all, it has not yet severed ties with it, and its head is a Russian citizen. The basis for these conclusions was explained during the presentation by religious scholars, representatives of Ukrainian state authorities, and a clergyman who spent many months in Russian captivity.
“When in Russia they say they are ‘protecting the UOC,’ this is not true,” says the author of the analytical report, religious scholar Vladyslav Havrylov. “This is because Russian authorities in the occupied territories immediately transform dioceses of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church into those of the Russian Orthodox Church. A well-known example is Father Kostiantyn Maksymov from occupied Zaporizhzhia region, who was sentenced to 14 years in prison for refusing to sign a consent for the transfer of the Berdyansk diocese of the UOC under the jurisdiction of the Russian Orthodox Church.”
The report contains an analysis of the actions of the Russian Orthodox Church and the occupation authorities regarding numerous violations of freedom of religion and human rights. Based on the results obtained, recommendations were formulated for Ukrainian and international human rights organizations. The analytical report was carried out within projects of the NGO “Media Initiative for Human Rights” (MIHR), which combines journalism and human rights advocacy to expose Russia’s war crimes in Ukraine and respond to human rights violations related to Russian aggression.
“This study very clearly indicates what the state seeks to protect the religious space of Ukraine from,” said Vyacheslav Horshkov, Head of the Department for Religious Affairs of the State Service of Ukraine for Ethnopolitics and Freedom of Conscience, thanking the NGO for its work. He noted that the state currently lacks sufficient resources to conduct similar research.
Doctor of Philosophy, Deputy Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine, Vita Tytarenko, emphasized that this analytical report demonstrates that Ukraine has become a testing ground for the use of institutionalized religion as a weapon. “This is not about isolated incidents, but about a deliberate policy in which the Russian Orthodox Church acts in coordination with the occupation administrations,” says Ms. Vita. “However, Ukraine is not only a testing ground for developing hybrid weapons, but also a laboratory for creating religious and spiritual resistance — that is, resilience. Such analysis provides the foundation for building it. Awareness at the national level of the threats posed by the aggressor state through religion as an instrument of influence is a prerequisite for our internal resilience.”
The first section of the report is devoted to the ideological foundation of the Russian Orthodox Church’s monopoly and the persecution of dissenting Christians of other denominations in the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine. A systematic analysis of many facts from various sources shows that the concept of the “Russian world” (“Russkiy mir”) provides the basis for repression against Christian communities that do not support Moscow. The report text recalls that the introduction of the “Russkiy mir” concept into Russia’s official policy was the result of cooperation between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Russian government.
Back in 2007, in his annual address to the Federal Assembly, Putin stated that the Russian language “is not only the bearer of an entire layer of truly global achievements, but also the living space of the multi-million ‘Russian world,’ which, of course, extends far beyond Russia itself.” At the beginning of the full-scale war against Ukraine, the Russian leader declared that “Russia in Ukraine is fighting for the ‘Russian world.’”
“The concept of the ‘Russian world’ serves as a convenient tool for Russia to justify its invasion of Ukraine and any of its wars — past or future,” the report states.
“This ideology is very insidious; it gives Russian ideologues the ‘right’ to label any center of Russian culture anywhere on the planet as a manifestation of the ‘Russian world’ and to claim that cultural space as representation of the state, and later even to claim the annexation of those territories to the Russian Federation,” says the report’s author, Vladyslav Havrylov. “The danger of this ideology also lies in the fact that it is constantly expanding.”
In addition to the concept's main ideologue, Kirill (Gundyaev), it is also promoted to large audiences in Russia and around the world by hierarchs of the Russian Orthodox Church. For example, Archpriest Artemiy Vladimirov incites hundreds of thousands of people to commit war crimes in Ukraine. He claims that Ukrainians are fascists and portrays Russia’s criminal “special operation” as the beginning of the “de-fascization” of Europe. Another archpriest, Andrey Tkachev, who after studying at the Moscow Suvorov Military School attended the Military Institute of the USSR Ministry of Defense specializing in “special propaganda,” justified Russia’s aggression against Ukraine on the Tsargrad TV channel as a “struggle against Western captivity in all spheres of life,” portraying the “Russian world” as the only means of fighting global “existential evil.”
“The Russian Orthodox Church, in the information war against Ukraine, involves its subordinate unit — the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate,” the report states. Hierarchical subordination to the Moscow Patriarchate enables the Russian authorities to use church and political propaganda technologies among the large number of UOC-MP parishioners in Ukraine. The faithful of this Church are instilled with the idea of spiritual and territorial unity with Russia.
Despite the UOC-MP's announcement of removing provisions from its charter linking it to the Russian Orthodox Church, a complete break did not occur. Accordingly, under Ukrainian law, the UOC-MP is officially recognized as a structure connected with the Russian Federation. The activities of the Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine are prohibited by law, and its subordination constitutes a violation of Ukrainian legislation. The artificially created confrontation allegedly between the Ukrainian authorities and the UOC-MP benefits Russian intelligence services, as it allows them to provoke internal conflicts within Ukraine.
“There are people in the UOC who are openly pro-Ukrainian. And there are those infected with criminal ideology. They deny Ukrainians the right to their own state and identity. This is not just propaganda of some doctrine — it is the denial of the Ukrainian political nation, which includes all people who recognize Ukraine’s independence and want to live in a Ukrainian state,” explained Vyacheslav Horshkov.
He recalled the legal procedure required for the state to stop criminal activity. Law enforcement agencies must document repeated cases of religious organizations being used to promote the ideology of the “Russian world.” For this purpose, communities can report incidents that require investigation, such as references to the “triune Rus” or the “triune people,” icons of Tsar Nicholas II, celebrations commemorating Moscow’s conquest campaigns, calls to obstruct mobilization, or propaganda promoting capitulation disguised as “peace,” and similar actions. “The policy currently pursued by the Ukrainian state is not the banning of a specific church,” Vyacheslav Horshkov emphasized. “It is a call to sever all ties with the organization that infects our religious space with an ideology that is dangerous to life.”
The second section of the report is devoted to analyzing methods of persecution of religious communities in the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine. This began even before the full-scale invasion. In May 2015, the leader of the self-proclaimed “DPR,” Oleksandr Zakharchenko, announced that the occupation authorities would recognize only four denominations: Orthodoxy of the Moscow Patriarchate, Catholicism, Islam, and Judaism. All other Christian communities, including Orthodox believers of the Kyiv Patriarchate, Greek Catholics, and Evangelical Christians, were classified as “sects.” The Russian administration accused them of extremist activities, espionage, and other crimes and persecuted them accordingly.
Researchers draw parallels with crimes of the Soviet era. Beginning in the late 1920s, the Bolshevik regime also systematically carried out repression against religious communities. In the 1930s, during Stalin’s purges, these persecutions became massive: tens of thousands of believers were exiled to concentration camps, and thousands were sentenced to execution. The goal of these repressions was to undermine the spiritual foundations of the population. In 1946, in western Ukraine, the Kremlin organized the “self-dissolution” of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church and forcibly annexed it to the Russian Orthodox Church, transferring all property to the “official church.”
However, as Vyacheslav Horshkov noted, Russia’s policy of using religious communities is not an invention of the Bolshevik regime. This history dates back to the Russian Empire. Russia still seeks to remain an empire, and the Russian Orthodox Church is its primary ally in those ambitions. Horshkov cited Ukrainian sociologist Olgerd Bochkovsky, who in the early 20th century analyzed the role of the Russian Orthodox Church toward the oppressed peoples of Russia: “The officially national policy of the tsarist government primarily aims at the Russification and conversion to Orthodoxy of all oppressed peoples of Russia. Cultural and national leveling and purely mechanical assimilation are its ideals.”
“The words ‘sectarians,’ ‘American spies,’ and ‘anti-state activity’ became deeply embedded in the consciousness of Soviet special services. Now the same definitions are used by Russian occupiers against believers and clergy on Ukrainian lands,” says Vladyslav Havrylov.
The occupation authorities are completely clearing the religious space of other churches, persecuting and destroying them, leaving only the Russian Orthodox Church. They use it as a powerful ideological tool to persecute dissenters and eliminate religious freedom in the occupied territories. Notably, Russian authorities view the religious freedom of certain communities as a component of Ukrainian identity.
Pastor Mykhailo Brytsyn from occupied Melitopol recalled that officers of the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation told him directly that the Protestant Church had no right to exist in the occupied territories, and that Protestant churches in Russia itself were only a temporary phenomenon that would eventually be banned.
According to the report, in 2022–2023, in the temporarily occupied territories of Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, and Donetsk regions, Russian authorities launched systematic persecution of Christian communities that did not subordinate themselves to the Russian Orthodox Church. After the occupation of eastern and southern Ukraine, religious communities have faced systematic administrative pressure, including regular searches, document checks, fines, psychological pressure on clergy, disconnection of electricity to religious buildings, and the blocking of financial accounts.
Russian soldiers conducted raids on churches and the homes of priests, seizing church documents, keys, mobile phones, computers, and other property. Worship services were banned. Russian occupiers confiscate closed churches for administrative use. Occupation officials declare: “Register your community under Russian law and you will get your house of prayer back.” However, re-registration is impossible without the religious community’s leader and formal founders obtaining Russian citizenship. Illegally detained and captive religious leaders are pressured to accept Russian citizenship, but doing so deprives them of the possibility of returning to Ukraine through prisoner exchanges.
To win people over, force them to leave, or break them so they can no longer resist, the occupation authorities use intimidation, imprisonment, torture, and beatings against both religious leaders and believers. The Federal Security Service (FSB) demanded that Father Oleksandr Bohomaz from Melitopol break the secrecy of confession and report who was pro-Ukrainian. They told him that if he refused, they would quickly “find” banned literature or weapons and arrest him.
Greek Catholic priests Ivan Levytskyi and Bohdan Haleta were told in a detention center in Berdiansk that weapons had been “found” on them and that they would receive 25-year prison sentences unless they joined the Russian Orthodox Church. The same methods are used against the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, and there have been tragic cases. Father Stepan Podolchaka from the occupied Kherson region, who refused to transfer to the Russian Orthodox Church, was tortured to death by Russian soldiers, who then cynically called his wife to identify the body.
According to a statement by Ukraine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs on January 10, 2026, regarding religious freedom in the temporarily occupied territories, 67 clergy members from various Ukrainian churches and religious organizations have been killed by Russian occupation authorities.
At the report presentation, Father Ihor Novoselskyi, rector of the Church of Saint Princess Olga of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in the village of Tokarivka, Kherson region, shared his story. Since 2014, he had refused to commemorate Patriarch Kirill and had switched to conducting services in Ukrainian. In 2022, as soon as Russian forces occupied the Kherson region, the FSB began searching for people who had participated in protests and the Maidan. “For six months they didn’t touch me, but they were gathering information about me,” the priest recalls. “Later, I realized they knew more about me than I knew myself. On the morning of August 29, 2022, special forces surrounded the church. I clearly remember a Buryat soldier wearing gloves pressing an automatic rifle to my head and ordering me to call the priest. I said it was me. A blow to the head — I fell and lost consciousness. When I came to, my hands were cuffed, and there was a bag over my head. They shoved me under a car seat and took me to a torture chamber. I heard others being tortured, and then it was my turn. They beat me until I blacked out. They forced me to remove my cross, put my hands behind my head, sit down, stand up, sit down, stand up, and explain why I had been detained. But I had no idea…” The torture took various forms — from beatings and being forced to sing the Russian anthem to electric shocks using a field telephone device known as a “tapik.”
Father Ihor is now undergoing rehabilitation near Kyiv. “Half the men here are former prisoners, and the other half are assault troops with injuries and concussions,” he says. “But we have things to talk about. It’s easier for me with people like this. They understand me without words, and I understand them. When I hear unfair judgments from people far from the war, I feel this surge of anger. But I understand that we must live. We are a strong nation — we are Ukrainians. I told them too: ‘You know, I am on my own land.’”
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The report provides recommendations to Ukrainian government officials, diplomats, and the international community. In particular, it calls for increasing diplomatic pressure on Russia to stop religious repression, supporting independent monitoring missions, and more actively involving international human rights organizations in documenting violations of religious freedom. It also recommends organizing information campaigns to raise awareness about religious persecution in the territories of Ukraine temporarily occupied by Russia, among other measures.
“Whether we or the world will allow this practice to continue,” urges Vyacheslav Horshkov, “or whether someone will set limits to these crimes, when what is essentially happening is the sanctification of sins.”
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