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Adam Zivo: Russia is systematically persecuting Ukrainian Christians
Russian President Vladimir Putin often portrays himself as a defender of Christian values, but, in reality, his government has systematically persecuted Christians who do not belong to the state-controlled Russian Orthodox Church. In Ukraine, this has meant murdering faith leaders, banning religious gatherings and shuttering churches.
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This aspect of the war has received scant media attention, but a new documentary, ' A Faith Under Siege: Russia's Hidden War on Ukraine's Christians,' gives a voice to these victims and exposes Moscow's predatory relationship with faith-based communities.
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The film stars Colby Barrett, an Evangelical American businessman who joined an aid convoy to Ukraine last summer after researching Moscow's persecution of non-Orthodox Christians. 'It blew my mind, and I knew I needed to tell this story… There was so much misinformation about what's going on in Russia, what's going on in Ukraine. What the war is about,' he told me in a video interview last month.
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He learned that, contrary to Putin's claims, Russia is not a bastion of traditional values: church attendance is dismal (a 2023 poll suggests that only 15 per cent of Russians considered religion very important), while the country's divorce rate is among the highest in the world.
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During the Soviet era, Moscow weaponized the Russian Orthodox Church as an instrument of espionage and control. Clergymen were recruited as informers, and KGB spies were placed within the church to monitor believers. This exploitation of organized religion has continued unabated since then — for example — the current head of the Russian Church, Patriarch Kirill, was reportedly a KGB agent in the 1970s.
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'(Putin is) a defender of control and wants to co-opt religion for this purpose,' Barrett said.
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He noted that, in 2016, the Kremlin passed the ' Yarovaya law,' which outlaws public proselytization within Russia. The legislation was designed to curtail the influence of Protestants and Evangelicals, whose faith operates beyond the domination of the Russian Orthodox Church, and permits the imprisonment of non-compliant believers.
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When Russia invaded Ukraine, it transplanted these restrictions into the occupied territories and systematically persecuted independent Christians. 'Evangelicals and Protestants are the first churches destroyed or shut down. Then they would move on to Catholics, and then to other religious minorities,' said Barrett.
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According to Barrett, Russia has destroyed over 630 religious buildings and tortured or killed at least 67 priests, pastors and monks in Ukraine since the beginning of the war.
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Barrett described in our interview how, according to religious leaders he met in Ukraine, one woman was sentenced to 20 years of prison simply for holding a Bible study in her home — an activity which Moscow's occupiers deemed 'terrorism.' As described in his film, another church was shut down and turned into a secular Russian cultural centre.
