Polling suggests the war has made Ukrainians more religious. But a closer look at more than two decades of data suggests a more complex picture.
While 12 years of Russian aggression have strengthened religious commitment among a significant minority of Ukrainians, the relationship between religious faith, church affiliation, and national identity has changed dramatically.
The share of Ukrainians describing themselves as believers increased to 71% in 2010, from 58% in 2000, according to Razumkov Centre research. Between 2010 and 2020, the share remained around 70%, though it rose during periods of crisis, to 76% in 2014, for example, following Russia’s occupation of Crimea and the beginning of the war in Donbas.
After Russia launched its full-scale invasion in 2022, the share rose again to 74%, before falling to 70.5% in 2023 and 68% in 2024.
This pattern suggests war and acute social stress temporarily increased the number of people who identified as religious, but the increases did not necessarily become permanent. It has not been a straightforward wartime religious revival.
A nationwide survey this year found 56% of Ukrainians had not changed their religious views or denominational affiliation since the full-scale invasion. While 18% said their religious commitment had strengthened, 6% said it had weakened.
Some 78% said they believe in God, according to the Rating Group survey, though only 13% reported attending religious services, with 36% saying they pray at home.
This gap suggests religious belief that is personal rather than institutional, a distinction that is particularly important when examining Ukrainian Orthodoxy and its historic relationship to Moscow.
There has been a dramatic decline in identification with the Ukrainian Orthodox Church associated with the Moscow Patriarchate (UOC MP), according to Razumkov Centre research. The share of respondents identifying as UOC MP fell to approximately 5% in 2025, from 13% in 2021, despite the church declaring independence from Moscow after the full-scale invasion.
At the same time, identification with the breakaway Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU) increased substantially, from 24% of respondents in 2021 to 36% in 2022 and 42% in 2023 and 2025.
Public attitudes to Moscow-linked religious institutions underline the scale of this change. About 80% of Ukrainians supported breaking ties to the Russian Orthodox Church, with 62% backing a law to ban religious organizations connected to the aggressor state.
Yet Ukrainian religious affiliations do not directly map onto pro-Russian and pro-Ukrainian attitudes. Some 70% of the Moscow Patriarchate’s faithful felt positively toward the European Union, an emphatic rejection of the teaching of Patriarch Kirill, head of the Russian Orthodox Church, who is a close ally of Vladimir Putin and has longstanding ties to Russian intelligence.
A majority of UOC MP believers even expressed a positive attitude toward NATO, though views within the denomination vary considerably depending on region and other social factors.
The war has exposed the difference between faith, religious practice, and institutional affiliation. And it has made religious identity more politically and nationally significant.
For a country fighting a war against a state whose leadership has repeatedly invoked Russian Orthodoxy and the “Russian world” to justify its imperialism, the institutional dimension of religion has become entwined with questions of national security and sovereignty.
At the same time, Ukrainians continue to support religious freedom and report relatively low levels of distrust toward people belonging to other religious denominations.
The war has not simply pushed Ukrainians toward religion; it has forced many to reconsider what religious institutions represent, which institutions they trust, and where the boundary lies between personal faith and institutional allegiance.
Kateryna Odarchenko is a political consultant, a partner of the SIC Group Ukraine, and president of the PolitA Institute for Democracy and Development. A specialist practicing in the field of political communication and projects, she has practical experience in the implementation of all-Ukrainian political campaigns and party-building projects.
Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions expressed on Europe’s Edge are those of the author alone and may not represent those of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis. CEPA maintains a strict intellectual independence policy across all its projects and publications.
