Shortly after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February of 2022, Pastor Dmitry of the Word of Life Church in Melitopol, a city in southeastern Ukraine, woke up to Russian military SUVs parked outside his house. Soldiers rushed in and seized his computers, interrogated his family, and arrested him. They accused him of being a spy and held him for eight days. They threatened to kill him. He was later released, but his plight is an unfortunately common one in the Russian-controlled areas of Ukraine.
According to the Institute for Religious Freedom, a Ukrainian watchdog group, 640 religious sites in Ukraine, most of them Ukrainian Orthodox or Protestant, have been damaged by Russian attacks. Evangelical pastors have been jailed, beaten, and sometimes killed by Russian forces. Russia has become one of the hardest places to be an Evangelical Christian, according to the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom. Anti-terror laws prevent preachers from preaching the Christian gospel, and the government’s collusion with the Russian Orthodox Church restricts worship. That has been exported to the territories Russia has seized since 2022.
I visited Ukraine recently and as part of a delegation of Christian conservatives met with religious leaders in Kyiv. We heard firsthand accounts of persecution, from pastors and Ukrainian public officials who believe that the Russian invasion is an attack not only on Ukraine but on the Christian work that has been underway in this “Bible belt” of Eastern Europe. Since the fall of the Iron Curtain, Evangelical presence has grown in Ukraine, sending missionaries and church plants across Europe. One institution, the Ukrainian Baptist Theological Seminary in Lviv, boasts 2,000 students and alone has seen alumni plant almost 60 churches in Ukraine.
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Daniel Darling is the director of the Land Center for Cultural Engagement at Southwestern Seminary and the author of several books, including In Defense of Christian Patriotism, forthcoming from Broadside Books.
