Religion has become part of Russia’s war against Ukraine through more than sermons and propaganda. Places of worship, trusted local networks and institutional links to Russian religious centres have all acquired security significance, while Russian occupation authorities are reshaping religious life in territories they control.
Ukraine says its measures target organisational ties to structures in the aggressor state and specific criminal acts, not worship or private belief. The distinction is crucial: the country is pursuing individual clerics over alleged cooperation with Russian forces even as it tries to preserve a constitutional guarantee of religious freedom.
The legal line between a church and a security risk
More than 30,000 religious communities operate in Ukraine under a system that separates religious organisations from the state. Article 35 of the Constitution guarantees freedom of religion and recognises no compulsory or privileged faith. Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights likewise protects religious freedom while allowing restrictions established by law when they are necessary for public safety, public order or the rights of others.
That legal boundary is at the centre of Law No. 3894-IX. The measure provides for a judicial process to end the activity of religious organisations affiliated with religious centres in Russia, including the Russian Orthodox Church. Under the Ukrainian authorities’ stated approach, local congregations can continue holding services after severing organisational links with religious structures in the aggressor state.
The policy has nevertheless become part of a wider dispute over the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, commonly associated in public debate with its historical relationship to Moscow. Ukrainian officials insist that criminal cases against its clergy concern individual conduct rather than confessional identity. The law’s practical application, and whether its restrictions remain narrowly focused, will determine how convincing that distinction is.
Ukraine’s Security Service, or SBU, says it has opened more than 200 criminal proceedings involving clergy of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion. The agency says 78 people were formally notified of suspicion and 40 were convicted by Ukrainian courts and sentenced to prison. The cases cited by the authorities involve the alleged transfer of intelligence to Russia, assistance to occupying forces and the dissemination of Russian propaganda.
Some convicted individuals were, with their consent, included on lists for prisoner exchanges with Russia. The legal principle remains straightforward: responsibility should arise from a concrete offence established in an individual case, not from membership of a church. Law-abiding congregations retain the right to conduct religious activities.
When local trust acquires military value
Clergy can occupy an unusually trusted position in towns and villages. They know local residents, move through familiar neighbourhoods and may hear information about military movements or infrastructure that would not be easily accessible to an outsider. That role is not evidence of wrongdoing. It becomes a security issue when investigators allege that access was used to pass information to Russian forces.
Ukrainian authorities say individual members of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church collected information about military convoys, air-defence positions and critical infrastructure and sent it to Russia’s military intelligence or Federal Security Service. The alleged communications used mobile phones and messaging applications. During searches, investigators reportedly seized phones containing messages, photographs of the aftermath of shelling and other technical material.
In Odesa, the SBU said it had exposed a priest from a local Ukrainian Orthodox Church diocese who allegedly acted in the interests of Russian military intelligence. Investigators accused him of helping to correct a double missile strike on the city in March 2024 and of passing information about Ukrainian air-defence positions. Those claims belong to the relevant criminal proceedings and should not be treated as a finding against the church as a whole.
Other cases cited by Ukrainian authorities have ended in convictions. In Donetsk region, an archpriest of the Pokrovsk diocese was sentenced to 15 years in prison for passing the Russian Federal Security Service the coordinates of Ukrainian firing positions and command posts on the Novopavlivka axis. In Luhansk region, the head of a church in Lysychansk received a 12-year sentence for collecting and transmitting information about the deployment and firing positions of Ukrainian forces around Sievierodonetsk.
These cases show why trusted civilian institutions can become militarily significant during a war. They do not establish that a denomination, or the thousands of communities associated with it, is involved in espionage or collaboration. The relevant questions are what was allegedly done, what evidence was presented and whether a court reached a final decision.
From religious language to political influence
The information campaign extends beyond battlefield coordinates. Ukrainian law-enforcement authorities have reported finding thousands of Russian-produced publications during searches of sites linked to the church structure. They say the material denied Ukrainians’ right to self-determination, promoted the idea of a single three-part people and justified Russia’s armed aggression.
The former head of the Tulchyn diocese in Vinnytsia region, Metropolitan Ionafan, whose civil name is Anatolii Yeletskykh, was sentenced to five years in prison for justifying Russian aggression and distributing material that called for a violent change of power in Ukraine. This was a conviction in a specific case, not a finding about the activity of the entire diocese.
Other prominent cases remain at different procedural stages. Metropolitan Arsenii, the abbot of the Holy Dormition Sviatohirsk Lavra, whose civil name is Ihor Yakovenko, was placed in pre-trial detention. He is accused of disclosing the locations of Ukrainian checkpoints during a religious service. Metropolitan Feodosii, head of the Cherkasy diocese, whose civil name is Denys Snihiriov, is accused of inciting interconfessional hostility. These are allegations and judicial measures, not equivalent to final convictions.
Ukrainian security agencies have also linked the Union of Orthodox Journalists to networks they say are connected to Russia’s Federal Security Service. That characterisation is an assessment by the Ukrainian authorities. They describe the network’s alleged messaging as an effort to portray Ukraine as persecuting believers, damage the Ukrainian state’s reputation abroad and intensify social divisions.
Religious claims can be especially effective in this form of influence because they recast a dispute over institutional ties as an attack on faith itself. Russian propaganda has also sought international visibility for such narratives. At a public presentation of anti-Ukrainian materials in Moscow, Serbia’s ambassador to Russia, Momcilo Babic, was among the guests. Russian actors could use the diplomat’s presence to suggest external recognition and widen the circulation of pro-Russian messages in political and media circles in south-eastern Europe. His attendance alone does not establish endorsement of the claims presented there.
Occupation and the remaking of religious space
The most coercive dimension of the religious conflict is reported in areas occupied by Russia. According to the Institute for Religious Freedom, Russian forces have damaged or completely destroyed more than 630 religious buildings since the beginning of the full-scale invasion.
Protestant communities account for more than 34 per cent of documented cases involving the persecution of religious figures, according to the institute; in Zaporizhzhia region, the share is reported at 48 per cent. At least 206 Protestant prayer houses have allegedly been seized or destroyed. Representatives of these communities have reportedly been abducted, tortured or killed and accused of extremism or links to American organisations.
Pressure has also been directed at congregations belonging to the Orthodox Church of Ukraine and the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church. Occupation administrations require communities to re-register under Russian law, creating practical and legal barriers for organisations outside the Moscow Patriarchate. In the occupied part of Zaporizhzhia region, the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, the charity Caritas and other Christian organisations were reportedly banned, with their property subsequently taken over.
In Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions, Ukrainian Orthodox and Greek Catholic churches and prayer houses have reportedly been closed, looted or transferred to the Russian Orthodox Church. The pattern described by Ukrainian religious-freedom monitors combines administrative control with physical seizure: communities are forced into a new legal system, their buildings are removed from their control and independent religious authorities are pushed out of public life.
Religion has therefore become a test of how Ukraine balances national security with individual rights. The state is trying to sever institutional connections with religious centres in an enemy country and punish people accused or convicted of concrete crimes. Russia, in occupied territory, is using force, confiscation and administrative dependency to reorganise religious life around Moscow. The unresolved question is whether security measures can remain directed at demonstrable conduct and foreign control without becoming a collective judgement on religious belief.
