KYIV, Ukraine (BP) – The priest led an Orthodox church with the Moscow Patriarchate. But when Russia invaded, soldiers stripped the priest naked, knocked out his teeth with the butt of a rifle, and paraded him through the streets, taunting “Where is your God now?”
The priest is one of two leaders interviewed in a recent video by Colby Barrett, who, with the Ukraine Freedom Project, produces documentaries of Russia’s persecution of Christians.
“He was a UOC-MP (Ukraine Orthodox Church – Moscow Patriarchate) priest. Now since that time, that town’s been liberated. It’s now part of free Ukraine and both of those priests have switched over to the (OCU) Orthodox Church of Ukraine,” Barrett said. “I guess if somebody beats your teeth out you’d maybe switch over to the Ukrainian branch of Orthodoxy.
“But it just shows the level of brutality and kind of equal opportunity persecution that the Russians are going at against these priests and faith leaders.”
Russia is also destroying churches as its attacks their leaders.
“They’re shutting down every church that they don’t control, that is not under the control of the Kremlin,” Barrett said. “This isn’t just Protestants and Evangelicals. These are Catholics who have essentially been liquidated from the occupied territories as well as Orthodox believers. … And what we’ve seen is Russia really is doubling down on what they’re doing to churches and believers in the occupied territories. So it’s very systematic.”
Mission Eurasia, in its updated report “Continued War Against Faith: Religious Genocide in the Occupied Territories of Ukraine, 2022–2025,” referenced statistics documenting Russia’s attacks on at least 737 houses of worship in Ukraine in the first four years of the war.
“Over four years of the full-scale war, Ukraine’s religious infrastructure has suffered unprecedented losses. In statements issued in 2025, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine confirmed that Russian forces damaged or destroyed more than 640 places of worship, the majority of which were Christian churches, but also including mosques, synagogues, and other facilities belonging to religious communities,” Mission Eurasia said in its report. “According to the Religion on Fire project, as of December 16, 2025, at least 737 religious buildings had been documented as damaged or destroyed as a result of Russian aggression.”
Igor Bandura, vice president of international affairs for the All-Ukrainian Union of Associations of Evangelical Christian-Baptists (Ukrainian Baptist Union), counts at least 450 churches in the Baptist Union among the 737 impacted buildings. Among those are 320 churches located in Russia-occupied Crimea, and 150 churches in towns Russia has overtaken in the war.
“Everything is destroyed. Not only churches, but villages, towns, cities, everything is destroyed. So life is not there. Everybody left and everything is destroyed,” Bandura said. “So when the frontline was moving, people had to leave. So now we are talking about Zaporizhia and Kherson and even Dnipropetrovsk region.”
But displaced pastors continue to minister, launching new churches to serve internally displaced populations, Bandura said, as well as churches to serve Ukrainians forced to flee to Europe.
“We planted almost 100 churches for these four years. And a good number of them were planted by pastors who left occupied territories,” Bandura said. “They started to minister to internally displaced people from their region. And finally, people started to meet together. And now we have these churches.”
In Europe, Bandura counts at least 170 groups and churches launched across 15 countries to serve Ukrainian refugees.
“So it is a great development,” Bandura said.
In addition, the Ukraine Freedom Project documents believers worshiping in underground churches at great risks.
“What we’ve heard is that the believers are not giving up. They’re worshiping in secret, but that has become more and more dangerous as time goes on,” Barrett said. “As the Russian occupation enters many years now, they’re not easing up on believers. Russia’s actually cracking down even harder.”