Understanding Russia requires a certain sense of irony. This can be applied to a range of sectors, but especially to religion.
The Kremlin likes its citizens and open-to-persuasion foreigners to believe that it is a guardian of traditional values, the ancient belief systems that glue society together. For the Russian Federation, this means elevating the role of a slavishly loyal Orthodox Church and emphasizing virtues like marriage, child-bearing within wedlock, and the invasion of neighboring countries.
Meanwhile, the Russian authorities are increasing the persecution of Christian believers in captured Ukrainian territory, as well as inside Russia. That’s because they attend what the authorities judge to be the wrong churches, which include both Protestant groups and the Ukrainian Orthodox.
The Kremlin has shouted long and loud throughout the full-scale war that attention should be paid to the alleged persecution of the Russian Orthodox Church and its parishioners in Ukraine. This rhetoric sharpened following the official ban on the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate this summer. But Russia’s campaign against clergy and parishioners belonging to Christian groups was already long underway by that point.
As the US State Department’s 2023 religious freedom report put it, Russian authorities “investigated, detained, imprisoned, tortured and physically abused persons and seized their property because of their religious belief in groups designated as ‘extremist,’ ‘terrorist,’ or ‘undesirable.” These included Jehovah’s Witnesses, the Church of Scientology and “multiple” evangelical Protestant groups, as well as non-Christian organizations. At least five clergy have been murdered, Russian reports suggest, while other have been kidnapped and church property destroyed or confiscated.
The Evangelical pastor, Yevgeniy Peresvetov, said the FSB first tried to recruit him in 2010, but that he was able to resist attempts to pressure him. The security service was interested in him because of his Ukrainian citizenship and contacts with fellow believers in Ukraine. Following the annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the beginning of Russia’s war in Donbas, pressure on the clergymen increased.
He said: “A trusted source reported that when the war started, the FSB issued an unofficial order to get rid of active Ukrainians throughout Russia, primarily in Moscow.” After attempts to initiate a criminal case against him, he was deported and banned from Russia for 25 years as “a threat to the defense capability of the Russian Federation.” The pastor himself draws a connection with his ministering to churches in occupied Crimea.
Why go after the Protestant clergy? The simple answer is that they are not under the Kremlin’s control. In December 2015, a State Duma roundtable denounced what it described as “the activities of sects undermining the statehood and civilizational identity of Russia.” Roundtable participants argued the “sects” were “a threat to national security,” and accused them of organizing the Euromaidan revolution in Ukraine and beginning the war in Donbas.
The consequences of such positions were not long in coming, first in the occupied Donbas. The Protestant clergyman Aleksandr Khomchenko of Donetsk was arrested in August 2014 and cruelly tortured by the so-called “organs of security of the DPR.” Khomchenko claims that he was only praying for peace in his native land and was evacuating people from shelled communities. After his arrest, he was brutally beaten, an attempt made to forcibly convert him to the Orthodox faith, and subjected to a mock execution.
Parishioners of the Orthodox Church of the Kyiv Patriarchate have also been targeted. Archbishop Clement or the Crimean Diocese of the OCU (Orthodox Church of Ukraine) reported in 2019 that due to the confiscation of churches belonging to believers, the OCU in Crimea was effectively destroyed. Several years earlier, the only Ukrainian church in Russia was demolished.
The situation is no better for other faiths, even those recognized as “traditional” in Russia. Most of the 177 people imprisoned for religious belief in 2018 were Muslims, primarily Crimean Tatars, who disagreed with the annexation of the peninsula.
In 2017, Russia’s courts declared Jehovah’s Witnesses an extremist organization. At the same time, the Supreme Court issued a ruling to liquidate the Administrative Center and nearly 400 regional communities throughout the country. In 2018, criminal cases were initiated against community members in various regions for involvement in the activities of an extremist organization. The first searches and criminal cases were initiated in Crimea and then spread into Russia.
There were 792 believers facing criminal prosecution as of January 2024, according to the website “Jehovah’s Witnesses in Russia.” Punishments vary from fines and suspended sentences to long prison terms. Since the all-out war was started against Ukraine, the situation worsened significantly. Believers have been more often been given real prison terms and placed in solitary confinement. On November 11, Jehovah’s Witness Alexander Lubin died in the Kurgan region. The man’s health deteriorated significantly after temporary detention in a pre-trial detention center.
Oppression of Protestant churches in the occupied territories of Ukraine has also increased. The Center for National Resistance reports that “the occupiers confiscated the property of Protestant churches and conducted interrogations of believers, accusing them of possible collaboration with Ukrainian defense forces. Cases of disappearances of people following such interrogations are known.”
As for protestants living in Russia, as reported by German journalists, the majority have come to terms with self-censorship due to criminal liability for condemning the war in Ukraine. Some pastors have been photographed wearing camouflage helmets with the Russian tricolor and icon; others prefer simply not to speak of the war.
It seems that public support for the war or consent to recruitment has become the only way for Russian Protestants to avoid a prison term.
Kseniya Kirillova is an analyst focused on Russian society, mentality, propaganda, and foreign policy. The author of numerous articles for CEPA and the Jamestown Foundation, she has also written for the Atlantic Council, Stratfor, and others.
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.
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