Russia Advances 'Persecution Campaign' Against Evangelicals in Ukraine: ISW

Russia has shut down an evangelical Christian church in Ukraine, marking Moscow's latest move in a "persecution campaign" against Ukrainian evangelicals, according to the Institute for the Study of War (ISW).

The U.S.-based think tank said in an assessment published on Tuesday that Russian forces reportedly seizing the Ukrainian Christian Evangelical Church of the Holy Trinity in Mariupol was likely "part of a wider systematic religious persecution campaign in occupied Ukraine."

Petro Andryushchenko, adviser to Mariupol Mayor Vadym Boychenko, said in a Telegram post on Monday that from 10 to 30 Russian troops were occupying the church after expelling clergy.

Andryushchenko said the Russian occupiers had targeted the church at least in part because it provided a "human shield" for troops, located only five meters from occupied residential buildings.

According to ISW, the "Russian occupation officials most commonly persecute members of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and Protestants, particularly evangelical Baptists." The think tank said two-thirds of "reported religious repression events in occupied Mariupol" targeted Protestants.

Newsweek has reached out via email to the Russian Ministry of Defense for comment.

Last month, Serhii Lysak, head of Ukraine's Dnipro Oblast Military Administration, said that a 57-year-old man and 38-year-old woman had been injured in the Russian shelling of a church on Orthodox Easter.

During a virtual hearing of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom on March 15, religious freedom expert Dmytro Vovk said that "at least 26" religious leaders had been killed in Ukraine since the war began on February 24, 2022, while "many others" had been "detained, tortured or subjected to humiliating treatment."

The Ukrainian Institute for Religious Freedom said earlier this year that at least 494 religious buildings, theological institutions and "sacred places" had been destroyed, damaged or looted by the Russian military as of January.

While Ukrainian Orthodox was the most targeted single denomination, the organization said that "the scale of destruction of evangelical church prayer houses is immense," claiming at least 170 had been destroyed at the beginning of the year.

Sergey Demidovich, evangelical leader in the Donetsk city of Sloviansk, told the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) in January that Protestant churches were repeatedly being shut down by Russian forces, with parishioners getting threatened with arrest if they met to worship outside of church.

"I never thought in the 21st century, in [a] free country as Ukraine, it was possible to experience this level of persecution," said Demidovich. "The separatists saw Protestant Christians as enemies. They viewed us as cults."

"All the Protestant churches in the city were either taken over by rebels or forced to close," he continued. "We were forbidden to meet for services and the leadership forced to leave or be under risk of arrest."

CBN also quoted multiple Ukrainian pastors who said they had been arrested and tortured by Russian soldiers, with one saying that the troops were directed to "kill all the Christian pastors who are not part of the Russian Orthodox Church."