The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine once again draws the attention of the international community to the ongoing gross and systematic violations of religious freedom in the territories of Ukraine temporarily occupied by the Russian Federation.
This is according to a statement the ministry published on its website.
“The Russian state, together with the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC), cynically ignoring the norms of international law, has implemented a system of repression against religious communities in the captured Ukrainian territories, aimed at destroying religious diversity and Ukrainian spiritual identity,” the statement reads.
Diplomats add that,uUnder the guise of “canonical order,” the occupation administration forcibly subjugates independent religious communities to the ROC, persecutes clergy and believers, destroys church buildings, and imposes the ideology of the so-called “Russian world.”
The Russian Orthodox Church implements the Kremlin’s aggressive policy, becoming an instrument for the destruction of Ukrainian identity, MFA Ukraine stressed: “Representatives of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, Protestant communities, Roman and Greek Catholic churches, Muslim organizations, and all those representatives of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church who disagree with the occupation regime suffer from repression. Criminal cases are fabricated against them, searches are conducted, and they face threats and physical pressure.”
Among the examples of oppression, the diplomats noted the case where in August 2024, a so-called court in the temporarily occupied territory of Ukraine sentenced Ukrainian Orthodox Church priest Kostiantyn Maksimov to 14 years of imprisonment on fabricated espionage charges after he refused to transfer his parish to the ROC.
According to the data cited in the Statement by the Chair of the International Religious Freedom and Belief Alliance (Article 18 Alliance – IRFBA), Ambassador of the Czech Republic Robert Řehák, dated February 24, 2025, since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, Russian troops have killed 67 clergy members of various denominations in Ukraine and damaged or destroyed more than 640 religious buildings, including 596 Christian churches.
In the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine, Russia systematically persecutes all religious organizations not subordinate to the Moscow Patriarchate, MFA Ukraine noted: “Russia forcibly annexed eight dioceses of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church to the ROC — more than 1,600 parishes and 23 monasteries, and eliminated all communities of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine in the temporarily occupied Crimea, where the last temple of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine was destroyed in June 2024.”
Other religious minorities are also subjected to repression, the foreign ministry wrote: “On January 14, 2025, the so-called ‘Gagarin District Court of Sevastopol’ sentenced two representatives of the religious organization ‘Jehovah’s Witnesses’ — Viktor Kudinov and Sergey Zhigalov — to six years in a penal colony for allegedly ‘organizing the activities of an extremist organization.’”
As of February 2025, at least 14 Jehovah’s Witnesses were imprisoned in Crimea, despite the European Court of Human Rights ruling that recognized the ban on this organization’s activities in Russia and the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine as illegal, the statement reads.
According to the Ministry’s sources, Russian occupation forces illegally detain over 30 Ukrainian religious figures.
On April 22, 2024, in temporarily occupied Berdyansk, Russians seized the Catholic Church of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary and kidnapped its priests. In Mariupol, the occupiers took Pastor Mikhail Reznikov captive. Pastor Anatoliy Voloshin spent more than 300 days in Russian captivity.
In its 41st report, the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine documented cases of torture and ill treatment of Greek Catholic priests whom the Russian occupation authorities have imprisoned in detention facilities in the temporarily occupied territory of the Donetsk region since November 2022.
In December 2024, the Mission noted that representatives of various religious communities continue to face criminal prosecution and harsh prison sentences imposed by occupation courts in cases related to their religious activities.
On March 25, 2025, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) in its 2024 report recommended keeping Russia on the list of Countries of Particular Concern (CPC) due to gross and systematic violations of religious freedom, including in the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine expressed gratitude to international partners for their impartial assessments of the human rights situation in the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine, particularly in the sphere of FoRB, where the rights mentioned are guaranteed in particular by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
“We call on the international community to strongly condemn the crimes committed by the Russian Federation in the temporarily occupied Ukrainian territories, to increase pressure on the aggressor state, and to intensify work on bringing to justice those involved in human rights violations and repression against Ukrainian religious communities,” the statement reads. “We appeal to all churches, religious organizations, and believers around the globe, regardless of their faith and denominational affiliation, requesting them to pay attention to the barbaric Russian persecution against ordinary people who pose no threat to anyone and who only want to believe in God, pray and enjoy the right to freedom of conscience and religion.”
MFA Ukraine also asked everyone in the world who values fundamental human rights “not to silently observe crimes against faith and believers because silence only strengthens evil and gives it a sense of impunity.”
“Instead, we call for joint and concerted efforts in countering evil — both in word and deed,” MFA concluded.
