Persecuted Ukrainians: ‘We Are Speaking about People Being Murdered [for Their] Faith’

Apart from the bickering in Congress, the world’s eyes have largely turned away from war-ravaged Ukraine, where a remnant of desperate pastors and priests plead for help. For two years, the country’s churches have been ravaged, charred beyond recognition, or toppled by the steady volley of missiles. Evangelical Christians, Catholics, and others fear for their lives, worshipping deep underground to escape the long and brutal arm of the Russian state.

In some places, the bombing never stops. Pastor Andrii Skantsev in Kherson, one of the few to stay on the front lines, told CBN, “They are shelling 24 hours a day, seven days a week.” There, “streets are practically empty. Homes have been left vacant. Most everything is boarded up.” It’s a ghost town, he shakes his head. “Those people who decided to stay in this conflict zone are asking for help,” the pastor urges.

Others never had the chance. Dozens of church leaders have been slaughtered in the Russians’ violent march through Ukraine. Innocent clergy have been found dead in the street, their bodies disfigured from the torture. Mission Eurasia calls the brutality “widespread,” warning of “mock executions, threats of rape, electrical torture, and hours-long group beatings.” In many cases, the pastors and priests just disappear, held in “in horrific conditions.”

The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), who’s long identified Russia as a Country of Particular Concern on its watchlist, collected horror stories from the ground — nightmarish testimonies of soldiers holding priests like Sergey Chudinovich captive in a “cold basement without proper clothing.” A place where Vladamir Putin’s officials beat, strangled, and attempted to rape him with a baton until he broke.

Others — from imams to Jehovah’s Witnesses — were snagged at checkpoints or in more remote regions, some stripped of their clothes, bludgeoned, and ordered to parade around naked in the streets. If the war ever ends, most have nowhere to return to. More than 630 houses of worship have been destroyed, reduced to rubble or burned by “Russian missiles, suicide drones, artillery strikes, and other violence.”

There’s this misconception that the Russian Orthodox Church is Christian, Archbishop Borys Gudziak of Ukraine said. But it is the puppet of bloodthirsty tyrants, he wanted people to know. “We’ll be killed” and “eradicated” if Russia wins. “Wherever there is Russian occupation, there is genocide,” Gudziak warned.

When they come to an occupied area, Ukraine Freedom Project Founder Steven Moore said, “They see Protestant churches [and] they say, ‘This is an American religion. You must be an agent of the American government.’” So they go to the churches, he explained, and they shut them down. “They frequently torture the pastor, and, sometimes, they murder believers for their faith. And we know of 29 Christian leaders who have been murdered in Ukraine by the Russians.”

PBS special correspondent Simon Ostrovsky interviewed some of the survivors, who remember armed guards breaking down their church doors shortly after the invasion, ordering the congregations to stop meeting. “If you will not stop, you’re going to see the blood,” they threatened. Thousands of Christians have fled, leaving behind churches where crucifixes have been desecrated and sanctuaries turned into public offices for the Russian occupiers. “I remember [the] day,” Pastor Mark Sergeev told PBS, where he, his brother, and father were driving past their church, and shockingly called out, “Look, there’s no cross anymore. They just cut the cross.”

Two years later, the only church still open in their town of Melitopol is an Orthodox church affiliated with Moscow.

Incredibly, Moore points out, Protestants — who only made up about 4% of Ukraine’s population — “accounted for a third of persecution cases by Russians.” In other words, Bishop Ivan Rusyn reiterated, “We are not speaking about social marginalization. We are speaking about people being murdered because they have a different faith.”

Family Research Council President Tony Perkins, who served as chair of USCIRF, has admitted that he’s “skeptical of what’s happening in Ukraine,” but with these latest reports, he can’t help but be concerned. Information is “coming out of Ukraine that Russian propaganda [machines] are trying to distort or hide what’s actually happening there,” he warned on Wednesday’s “Washington Watch.” “They’re creating this propaganda that Ukrainians are persecuting Christians, when in fact the reports show that [Russia is].”

Pavlo Unguryan, a former Member of Ukraine’s Parliament, comes from four generations of Christians who were persecuted by the Soviet Union, so he understands “how important religious freedom [is].” Right now, he told Perkins, Russia has declared a holy war against the West — not unlike Iran.

After the collapse of the USSR 33 years ago, missionaries rushed to infiltrate the region, establishing more than 10,000 evangelical churches, Unguryan explained. Ukraine became the “Bible belt” of Eastern Europe, he said, “and this is why the Kremlin so hate[s] us.”

Even now, two years after the invasion, missile strikes like the one in Kupiansk a few weeks ago are killing pastors and leveling churches. It’s a spiritual war, Unguryan believes. And if Putin rolls through Ukraine, he’s not going to stop there. “Up next, it will be Romania, Moldova or Baltic countries or Poland.”

What will happen if the U.S. doesn’t support Ukraine, Perkins asked? “It will be Russians [who] come and kill us,” Unguryan said grimly. “… Everybody. It will be [a] big tragedy in the center of Europe.”

Yet even in these terrifying circumstances, God is at work. Less than a mile away from Russian forces, Pastor Oleh Derkanchenko’s Antonivka Kherson Church is “overflowing.” “There are times when Russian shells fall 25 meters left of the church and sometimes 30 meters right of the church, but nothing touches us. God protects us,” Derkanchenko told CBN. Yet even the constant threat doesn’t keep Ukrainians away.

Before the war, he said about 100 people attended regularly. Since Christmas of 2022, as many as 700 people risk their lives to worship, he exclaimed. “We have a yard full of people on Sundays,” Derkanchenko said. “People understand that the church today is a center of hope and inner peace.”

To Archbishop Gudziak, this is just another way God is showing Himself to a hurting people. “I’ve seen too many miracles.” And for all of the suffering, he marvels at the country’s resilience. “It’s really quite amazing, because there’s so much devastation, there’s so much death, there’s so much displacement, and yet the people are pretty clear in their resolve.”

They continue to be “very grateful to all who pray, who advocate, and who help.” “There’s a special respect for America,” he insisted. But the reality is, “if we don’t defend ourselves, we’ll be killed.” So Ukrainians are “going to fight and defend God-given principles, God-given dignity, so that our children and grandchildren don’t have to suffer.” At the end of the day, he vowed, “We have to stop [Russia’s aggression], no matter what the cost.”