SLOVIANSK, Ukraine — Ukraine’s small evangelical Protestant minority says an unrelenting campaign of persecution accelerated when Russian military formations rumbled across the country’s northern and eastern borders on Feb. 24, 2022.
Russia and its local proxies have persecuted Protestant denominations since the clashes between Kyiv and pro-Russian forces began in 2014 in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region.
On a sunny Sunday morning in May, Petro Dudnyk, pastor of the Evangelical Good News Church of Sloviansk in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, led the faithful in prayers: “God, we are grateful for all that you have done for us, and those are not mere words. Lord, we thank you.”
With their hands raised and eyes closed, the worshippers prayed, sang and listened to sermons in Ukrainian and Russian. Men and women, couples with young children and gray-haired pensioners assemble every Sunday to thank God for his generosity and protection, for his grace and goodness.
An elderly woman, her head covered with a shawl, remained in her seat, her gnarled, bony hands resting over the knob of her wooden cane as she joined in the prayer.
Aside from the language of the proceedings, the service was scarcely different from those held every Sunday in America’s evangelical churches. The building where the faithful gather stands out among the myriad Orthodox churches that dot the region’s landscape. Instead of shimmering domes and pastel walls, the temple is built in an unadorned, brutalist style, all straight lines and blinding-white concrete.
Logistical hub
Were it not for the gigantic cross adorning its facade, the church could easily be mistaken for the former headquarters of a Soviet-era regional administration agency.
For the faithful, the Good News Church is a place of prayer and a community center. Over the years, it has also become a logistical hub for volunteers delivering humanitarian aid and evacuating civilians from besieged front-line towns and villages across the Donetsk region, where a low-grade war has been raging since 2014.
Scattered among the assembled congregation, a few soldiers in uniform served as a grim reminder that Russia’s full-scale invasion continued unabated a mere 20 miles away.
Furrowing his brow, Mr. Dudnyk raised his hand once more. His prayer was now unlike any heard within the safe confines of an American church. “Drive the enemy from our land, Lord. Heal our land. Let victory come, Lord. Let the enemy fall and run away from us.”
He added a heavenly appeal for those on the front lines: “We bow to you, Lord. You are our only hope for our soldiers so that they protect our borders, that they stay strong in this fight.”
With its twin city of Kramatorsk, Sloviansk is the last major Ukrainian-held stronghold in the Donetsk oblast.
Having lived through the Russian occupation of 2014, when separatist fighters and mercenaries armed and equipped by the Kremlin took over the city at the onset of the war in Donbas, Sloviansk’s evangelicals know what awaits them if their town falls once again under Russian control.
Since 2014 and the outbreak of war in the region, Ukrainian Protestants and evangelical Christians in Russian-occupied territories have been targets of particular cruelty: imprisonment, torture and sometimes outright killings.
Four members of the Pentecostal Church of the Transfiguration of the Lord in Sloviansk were kidnapped and killed In June 2014. Church officials said the crime was motivated by sectarian hatred.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly sought to portray his invasion of Ukraine and Russia’s broader conflict with the West as a defense of traditional Christian values against secular Western degeneracy. Evangelicals, estimated to represent about 2% of Ukraine’s population, say his army and security services have been waging a ferocious war against fellow Christians in the occupied territories of Ukraine.
A 2014 State Department report on international religious freedom accused Russian-backed separatists of having “kidnapped, beaten and threatened” members of religious congregations in areas under their control and participating in antisemitic acts.
Targeted abuse
The intimidation campaign has been ecumenical. Protestants, Catholics and members of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kyiv Patriarchate have borne the brunt of Russia’s religious persecution. Still, the small minority of Ukraine’s Protestants have not been shielded from abuse.
“Viewed as apostates to their native Orthodox faith, traitors to their nation and foreign agents, who undermine anti-Western Orthodox conservatism, evangelicals have been subject to searches, abductions, interrogations, unlawful detainment and torture,” Catherine Wanner, a leading scholar on Russian religious persecution in Ukraine, said during a recent hearing of the Helsinki Commission. “They’ve had their property confiscated, their families threatened and have been subjected to physical violence.”
Ms. Wanner is a professor of history, anthropology and religious studies at Penn State University.
The challenges in eastern Ukraine are especially difficult.
“Protestantism values individualism and personal freedom, and the Russians can’t allow that,” said Sloviansk native Maxim, who offered his call sign, “Reverend,” instead of a last name over a cup of coffee.
A soldier and chaplain within Ukraine’s “Donbas” battalion, Maxim was introduced after the spring Sunday service. Tall, brawny and sporting a neatly trimmed mustache, the young man contrasted sharply with his martial demeanor and military attire with carefully considered answers and depth of theological knowledge.
“The Russians have this anger towards others. They think, ‘I will not allow you to live better than me,’” he said between sips of coffee. “Protestantism is the exact opposite. It is the faith of a man who is hardworking who wants to improve his life.
“It is,” he said, “capitalism, in a sense.”
Maxim said Russia’s persecution of Protestants and evangelicals is motivated by theology as well as political and security considerations.
“If you take the Russian state and look at its foundations, you will find that the first is the [Federal Security Service], and the second is the Russian Orthodox Church,” he said. “Hence, religious minorities threaten the Kremlin’s hold on power. They view us as something foreign and potentially as spies.”
Mykhailo Britsyn echoed that sentiment. He is the presbyter of a Protestant church in Ukraine’s southern city of Melitopol, which was occupied in the early days of the Russian invasion.
“Every Protestant is a member of a sect and, potentially, an American spy,” Mr. Britsyn said in an interview conducted over Zoom. “They don’t care about the differences: Baptist, Adventist, Methodist. To them, we’re all spies.”
On the eve of the May 9 celebrations commemorating the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany, the Russians requisitioned his church, sawed down its cross and painted over the building with portraits of separatist leaders and warlords who had taken part in the war in Donbas, he said.
“We could have never imagined that we’d be killed there, arrested,” Mr. Britsyn said. “We’re ordinary people. We’ve never been involved in either military or political processes. We’re just a church.”
Since fleeing Russian occupation, he has contributed to several reports on the persecution of religious minorities in the occupied territories of Ukraine, dutifully documenting cases of torture, kidnapping and destruction of church property by Russian troops and security services.
The Institute for Religious Freedom, a Kyiv-based nongovernmental organization, said shelling and looting had damaged some 630 religious buildings and sacred sites from the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion through November. That included 206 evangelical churches.
Maxim, the chaplain/soldier, vowed to fight until all of Ukraine’s territory was liberated and the country’s sovereignty was fully restored.
“I’m a Christian, but I understand perfectly well that my freedom and the freedom of my family, of my friends, depends on a free Ukraine, on freedom for Ukraine.”
For Sloviansk’s Good News Church believers, Mr. Dudnyk preached a message of hope despite his flock’s trials and strains over the past decade.
“Where bullets are now flying, where mines are lying, where shells are falling, Lord, you will bloom. You will heal the earth, Lord, and people will live there, children will be raised, churches will open, Lord. Glory to you.”
• Guillaume Ptak can be reached at gptak@washingtontimes.com.
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