Russia’s two-week war to wipe Ukraine off the map has now passed its two-year anniversary. Its cost to Russia has been enormous. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s folly has resulted in nearly 400,000 Russian casualties, representing more than one-third of its active-duty military. Russian casualties in Ukraine now exceed by a factor of four those of the Red Army in Afghanistan in a conflict that lasted almost a decade.
On Feb. 21, 2022, Putin addressed Russians from the Kremlin. “Ukraine is not just a neighboring country for us,” he declared. “It is an inalienable part of our own history, culture and spiritual space.” He followed with a historical invective meant to delegitimize Ukrainian nationalism and identity. Once again, he singled out religion. “Kyiv continues to prepare the destruction of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate,” he explained. Three days later, Russian forces poured across the border.
Putin is the product of the KGB, but, while he lionizes the Soviet Union and sees its end as a historic tragedy, there is a difference between Soviet leaders and Putin. The Soviet Union saw religion as the opiate of the masses, but Putin instead seeks to manipulate religion to control Russians and channel their nationalism.
It was against Putin’s corruption of religion that, in October 2018, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church officially split with its Russian counterpart, revoking the 332-year-old agreement by which the patriarch of Moscow ordained the church leader in Kyiv. This made sense. For many years, the church in Ukraine polled as among the most trusted social institutions, and the multidenominational Ukrainian Council of Churches became one of the country’s most influential social unions. The absence of any single, dominant church in Ukraine prevented state capture in the way that Putin, as tsars previously, captured the Russian Orthodox Church.
After the Patriarchate of Constantinople approved the Ukrainian move and recognized the new Orthodox Church of Ukraine, the Russian Orthodox Church split with Constantinople, triggering the worst schism in the Orthodox Church in a millennium. Putin viewed the Russian Orthodox Church as an agent of his imperialism and could not accept freedom of faith in Ukraine.
Mission Eurasia, an educational charity to help religious communities overcome the repercussions of the communist era, has documented the religious angle to Russia’s occupation and repression of eastern Ukraine. In the first 21 months of the Russian invasion, Russian forces damaged or destroyed over 600 religious sites. Some were surely collateral damage as Russian forces launched rocket barrages aimed at Ukrainian towns and cities. Russian soldiers, however, selectively looted Ukrainian churches, and occupation authorities transformed Ukrainian churches into administrative headquarters.
Not only have Russians purposely destroyed churches belonging to the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, but they have also razed any property belonging to the Ukrainian Pentecostal Church, the prayer halls of the Evangelical Christians-Baptists, and the facilities of the Seventh-day Adventists. The Russians have also selectively destroyed the Kingdom Halls of Jehovah’s Witnesses. Nor were churches the only target. While Putin falsely labels Ukrainians Nazi sympathizers, Russian forces have razed synagogues and mosques across eastern Ukraine.
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An irony of the Russian war on Ukraine is that Putin justified it in the need to protect Russian speakers, but the violence, repression, and wanton destruction of the Russian forces turned even those the Kremlin expected to be its natural allies against it. This may be why Russian operatives, most lacking any knowledge of liturgy, began to monitor church services in the occupation zone to prevent the Ukrainian Orthodox churches still affiliated with the Moscow patriarch from turning against Russia. Russian intelligence also began to interrogate priests inside churches as a means of intimidation. Those who did not subordinate themselves to Putin found the figurative horse head in their bed, facing property confiscation and arrest.
Too often, the separation of church and state in the United States leads policymakers to treat discussion of religion as a third rail. Such blindness is manna for religious repressors. It is time to recognize Putin for what he is: as much an enemy to religious freedom as he is to Ukrainian nationalism or democracy.
Michael Rubin is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential. He is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.