SLOVIANSK, Ukraine — For Ukraine’s small evangelical Protestant minority, the war with Russia that began in February 2022 only accelerated what they say is a campaign of persecution that was underway long before massed Russian formations rumbled across the country’s northern and eastern borders on February 24, 2022.

Since the clashes between Kyiv and pro-Russian forces first began in 2014 in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region, Russia and its local proxies have waged an unrelenting campaign of persecution against Ukrainian Protestant denominations.

On a sunny Sunday morning in May, as every Sunday, Petro Dudnyk, pastor of the Evangelical Good News Church of Sloviansk, in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, is leading the faithful in prayers:  “God, we are grateful for all that you have done for us, and those are not mere words,”the pastor says at one point. “Lord, we thank you.” 

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With their hands raised and eyes closed, the assembly prays, sings, and listens to sermons in Ukrainian and Russian. Men and women, couples with young children and gray-haired pensioners have gathered, like every Sunday, to give thanks to God for his generosity and protection, for his grace and goodness.

An elderly woman, her head covered with a shawl, stays in her seat, her gnarled, bony hands resting over the knob of her wooden cane as she joins in the prayer.

Aside from the language of the proceedings, there is little difference between the sermon and the ones held every Sunday in any of America’s Evangelical churches. The very building where the faithful have gathered stands out among the myriad Orthodox churches that dot the region’s landscape: Instead of shimmering domes and pastel-colored walls, the temple is built in an unadorned, brutalist style, all straight lines and blinding-white concrete.

Logistical hub

In fact, were it not for the gigantic cross adorning its facade, the church could easily be mistaken for the former headquarters of some regional administration agency from the Soviet times.

But for the faithful, the Good News Church is at once a place of prayer and a community center. Over the years, it has also become a logistical hub for the volunteers delivering humanitarian aid and evacuating civilians out of besieged frontline towns and villages across the Donetsk region, where a low-grade war has been raging since 2014.

Scattered among the assembled congregation, a handful of soldiers in uniform serve as a grim reminder that a mere 20 miles away, Russia’s full-scale invasion continues unabated.

Furrowing his brow, pastor Dudnyk raises his hand once more, his sermon now unlike any that would be heard today 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 implores, adding a heavenly appeal for those on the front lines not far away.

“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 stands as the last major Ukrainian-held stronghold in the Donetsk oblast.

Having already lived through Russian occupation in 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 was to fall 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 the target of particular cruelty: imprisoned, tortured, – and, sometimes, outright murdered.

In Sloviansk itself, four members of the Pentecostal Church of the Transfiguration of the Lord in June 2014 were kidnapped and subsequently murdered in June 2014, a crime deemed at the time by church officials to have been 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, but evangelicals here — estimated to represent about 2% of Ukraine’s overall population — say his army and security services have been waging a ferocious war against fellow Christians in the occupied territories of Ukraine.

A 2014 report on international religious freedom published by the U.S. State Department accused Russian-backed separatists of having “kidnapped, beaten and threatened” members of religious congregations in areas under their control, as well as having “participated in anti-Semitic acts.”

Targeted abuse

The intimidation campaign has been ecumenical, with Protestants, Catholics and members of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kyiv Patriarchate having borne the brunt of Russia’s religious persecution. But being such a small minority has not shielded Ukraine’s Protestants from targeted 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,” said. Catherine Wanner, a professor of history, anthropology and religious studies at Penn State and a leading scholar on Russian religious persecution in Ukraine, during a recent hearing of the Helsinki Commission. “They’ve had their property confiscated, their families threatened, and have been subjected to physical violence.”

That translates into especially difficult challenges on the ground in eastern Ukraine.

“Protestantism values individualism and personal freedom, and the Russians can’t allow that,” observes Sloviansk native Maxim, who offers his call sign — “Reverend” — instead of a last name over a cup of coffee.

A soldier and chaplain within Ukraine’s “Donbas” battalion, Maxim had been introduced to us after the spring Sunday service, which he had also been attending. Tall, brawny, and sporting a neatly trimmed mustache, the young man’s carefully considered answers and the depth of his theological knowledge contrasted sharply with his martial demeanor and military attire.

“The Russians have this anger towards others, they think, ’I will not allow you to live better than me,’” he says between sips of coffee.”And Protestantism is the exact opposite of this — it is the faith of a man who is hard-working, who wants to improve his life.” “It is,” he adds, “capitalism, in a sense.”

Maxim argued that Russia’s persecution of Protestants and evangelicals is also motivated by political and security considerations as well as theological ones.

“If you take the Russian state and look at its foundations, you will find that the first is the FSB, 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.”

It’s a sentiment echoed by Mykhailo Britsyn, 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 Union’s 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 recounted.

“We could have never imagined that we’d be killed there, arrested,” said Mr. Britsyn. “We’re ordinary people, we’ve never been involved in either military or political processes. We’re just a church.”

Since managing to flee 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.

According to the Institute for Religious Freedom, a Kyiv-based NGO, just through the end of November 2023, some 630 religious buildings and sacred sites had been damaged by shelling or looting since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion – including some 206 evangelical churches — or just under a third of the total.

Maxim, the chaplain/soldier, vows to fight on until all of Ukraine’s territory is liberated and the country’s sovereignty is 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..”

As for Sloviansk’s Good News Church believers, Mr. Dudnyk, the pastor, preached a message of hope despite the trials and strains of the past decade for his flock.

“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.”