Russia is seriously infringing religious freedom on lands illegally occupying in Ukraine, Forum 18 said in a new report.
The most atrocities forum 18 cited in the March Religious Freedom Survey of Ukraine, which tortured and murdered pastors and priests, exercised religious freedom, ban worship services and the entire religious community, shutting down churches, prosecuting missionaries, banning the Bible as extremist literature, and cited residents in the March Religious Freedom Survey of Ukraine.
Forum 18 is a Norwegian human rights organization that promotes religious freedom. The organization’s name is based on Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
The survey reflects findings from the US State Department in its latest (2023) report on International Religious Freedom, and several groups serving Ukrainian Christians, including the report from the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, and the 2025 faith in Mission Eurasia under the Russian Terrorist Report, which was released at the 2025 International Religious Freedom Summit in February.
“The underlying causes of freedom of religion and belief, as well as other human rights violations in the territory of Russian-occupied Ukrainians, are Russian invasion and occupation since 2014,” Forum 18 writes. “It appears that freedom of religion and belief and other human rights violations will continue until Russia’s occupation of Ukrainian territory is over.”
Since the Russian invasion in February 2022, it has illegally annexed additional territory, now Ukraine’s fifth largest, Forum 18 said.
The report has not reached an agreement as it includes speculation that efforts to reach a peace agreement with Russia will retain the land that Russia occupy illegally in Ukraine.
Russia attacked Ukrainian energy infrastructure with dozens of missiles and drones from late March 6 until the next morning, reporting it on March 7, killing at least 10 individuals, attacking homes and cutting down the factory of the home.
At the same time, the Trump administration has halted military aid and intelligence to Ukraine, including access to satellite images that could help Ukraine respond to the Russian fire, the AP said it cites sources from the US Geospatial Intelligence Agency.
Ukrainian President Voldymi Zelensky was announced on March 6th, with Saudi Arabia hosting Zelensky and President Donald Trump, and peace negotiations are expected to resume next week.
Religious freedom in Ukraine and the spread of the European gospel is largely based on war resolution, Baptist leaders in the region told the Baptist Press.
“This is not just a Russian war against Ukraine,” said Igor Bandura, vice president of the All-Ukrainian Union of the evangelical Christian Baptist Church, maintained in a December 2023 interview with the Baptist Press. “This is a war for Christian values ​​for the possibility of free spreading the gospel and fulfilling the great committee of the Lord Jesus.”
“We should remember the spiritual dimension of this war, particularly the attempt to destroy Ukraine as a goal post for Eastern European Christianity using Russia,” Bandura said US aid to Ukraine was at stake.
Others have focused on the loss of religious freedom in Russian occupied territories, including Ukrainian Baptist Theological Seminary President Yarsolav Paisz, a Ukrainian journalist who visited the United States last year and a Ukrainian journalist who visited Mission Eurasia.
Forum 18 documents many crimes and violations of religious freedom in its report, beginning with the 2014 Russian occupation.
Although no specific numbers have been cited, the report points out that many religious leaders have been “disappeared” for being murdered, arrested, arrested, tortured for refusing to practice religion or register congregations with the Russian Orthodox Church.
However, Mission Eurasia tallied 47 Ukrainian religious leaders who have been murdered since the 2022 invasion of Russia, including 18 Baptists from the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchy), seven from the Orthodox Church in Ukrainian, and two adventurers, in faith under the Russian terrorist report.
Among the Forum 18 listed as a murder victim was Stephan Podolchak, a 59-year-old priest of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in Karanchak, the Russian-occupied Herson region where the body was found on the streets on February 15, 2024. And then, 52-year-old Pentecostal undergraduate Anatoly Prokopcuk and his 19-year-old son Alexander Prokopcuk, were thigh-painted.
Many of the arrested people are taken to Russian prisons. In one of the latest cases, Crimean prison authorities, occupied in Russia in mid-February, transported Ukrainian orthodox priest Kostiantin Maximov to a strict labor camp in Russia’s Saratov region and quarantined for two weeks.
He was originally arrested in May 2023 without explanation and was arrested in a secret location for 10 months before being heard under false accusations of spying in opposition to the Russian Orthodox Church.
Maximov has been jailed over 600 miles from Tokumak, the Russian-occupied Ukrainian town of Tokumak, in the Zaporidia region where he served as a priest.
Forum 18 reports are available here.
This article has been republished with permission from Baptist Press.
Diana Chandler is a senior writer at Baptist Press.
