Leading think-tank the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) says Russia is ‘committing gross violations of religious freedom’.
The ISW produces a daily online briefing, with maps, of the up-to-date military situation in Ukraine.
The think-tank believes that Russian religious persecutions are part of an ongoing, organised Russian cultural genocide and ethnic cleansing campaign.
The ISW calculates that, since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022, Russian soldiers or occupation authorities have committed at least 76 acts of religious persecution in Ukraine. These have included closing, nationalising, or forcefully converting at least 26 places of worship to the Kremlin-controlled Russian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate. More than 29 clergy or religious leaders have been killed or imprisoned and at least 13 places of worship have been looted, desecrated, or deliberately destroyed.
Andrew Boyd, spokesperson for Release International, a Christian ministry helping persecuted believers, said: ‘It confirms and highlights what Release International has been hearing from its partners in Ukraine, that in areas under Russian occupation Christians are facing violent persecution. ISW describes a campaign of state-sanctioned systematic religious persecution, targeting Ukrainian Orthodox, Baptists, Evangelicals and others. It condemns the conduct of Russian forces towards Protestants in occupied Ukraine as nothing less than brutal. In their words, President Putin is weaponising religion.
