ZAPORIZHZHIA, Ukraine — In the eight years that Maksym Vasin’s been documenting Russian attacks on religious freedoms in Ukraine, the executive director of the Institute for Religious Freedom said the violence has never been as “cruel” as it is now.
After Russia annexed Crimea and backed separatists to fight the Ukrainian government in the eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, they persecuted religious minorities, but the scale and brutality weren’t the same, he said.
Part of our Focus on: Faith and Development
This series illuminates the role faith actors and their communities play in strengthening global development outcomes.
“If in 2014 the Russian invaders threatened to kill priests, now they are being killed,” Vasin said. “If previously they expelled believers from Ukrainian churches and prayer houses, now they are destroying them with bombs and missiles strikes.”
As Russia’s invasion of Ukraine enters its second month, attacks on religious freedoms as well as human rights abuses are escalating, with accusations that soldiers are committing war crimes. Religious leaders, local officials, civil society, and journalists are being disappeared or arbitrarily detained, Ukrainians are being forcibly displaced into Russia, and religious institutions are being destroyed.
The Institute for Religious Freedom has documented the destruction or damage of at least 70 spiritual sites in eight regions as a result of Russian shelling and airstrikes — compared with less than a dozen in the last eight years — including cathedrals, prayer houses, synagogues, mosques, and administrative buildings of religious organizations, Vasin said. Last week, the Drobitsky Yar Holocaust Memorial near the northeastern city of Kharkiv was reportedly shelled by Russian forces.
Intentional attacks against buildings dedicated to religion, provided they are not military objectives, constitute war crimes, according to International Humanitarian Law. Vasin said the Russian army has also killed, captured, or arbitrarily imprisoned at least nine priests and pastors. Devex cannot independently verify the allegations.
Ukraine is a majority Orthodox Christian nation with nearly 80% of adults identifying as Orthodox. Vasin said the Ukrainian clergy is being particularly targeted because of its calls for Russian President Vladimir Putin to stop the war and because they are influential in their communities.
“Given that the church as an institution of society enjoys the greatest level of trust of the citizens of Ukraine, religious figures are one of the biggest obstacles for the Russian invaders,” he said. Religious leaders have also been at the forefront of providing aid to civilians, another reason why Vasin said they might be targets.
“People are being forcibly displaced from Ukraine. … Many found themselves in a situation when their only option was to cross into Russia or die, as shelling grew more intense.”
— Tanya Lokshina, Europe and Central Asia associate director, Human Rights WatchIn recent weeks, the international community has raised alarm at the growing atrocities across the country, which have killed more than 1,100 civilians and injured thousands, although the actual figures are believed to be considerably higher. Russian forces have been accused of using broad explosive weapons in populated areas, killing civilians, and damaging property, according to a report from the UN Human Rights.
Ukrainian police, civilians, and members of the territorial defense — volunteer military units of the armed forces — are also accused of torturing people believed to be pro-Russian supporters.
At a press conference, Matilda Bogner, head of the Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine, said missiles, heavy artillery shells, rockets, and airstrikes were having “disastrous effects” on civilians and their human rights, including the right to health, food, water, education, and housing.
During a trip to the eastern town of Zaporizhzhia, where thousands of civilians fleeing Mariupol have arrived in recent days, several people said they were threatened or intentionally targeted by Russian soldiers while trying to flee.
Over the last few weeks, Russia and Ukraine have agreed to create several humanitarian corridors allowing civilians to safely evacuate from front-line cities and towns. However, they’re often not respected with civilians accusing Russian soldiers of attacking them while trying to leave.
Deliberate attacks on civilian corridors are part of Russia’s strategy of isolating the population and depriving them of food, water, medicine, and access to information in order to suppress local resistance against Russian occupation as they try to take over cities, said Oleksandra Matviichuk, head of the Center for Civil Liberties.
Seated in a crowded reception center in Zaporizhzhia, as weary and traumatized displaced people from Mariupol sipped soup, registered for assistance, searched for loved ones, and decided where to go next, Liudmila Chernobryvets a 63-year-old grandmother held up her bandaged hands.
She lost her two pinky fingers and suffered retinal damage when Russian snipers shot multiple times at her car as she and her husband tried to escape Mariupol at the end of March.
Tying a white piece of cloth to the side mirrors of the car, to indicate they were civilians, the couple carefully mapped one of the only exit routes, knowing they’d have to pass through Russian checkpoints. They successfully drove through the first one, where Chernobryvets said the Russian soldiers were amicable, but 100 meters later their car was sprayed with bullets by different Russian soldiers, she said. Chernobryvets lost two liters of blood, passed out, and was rushed to a nearby hospital where she had surgery before arriving in Zaporizhzhia.
“They shot at our car on purpose,” she said, wiping tears from her face. “I want people to know this. [The Russians] knew and did it on purpose.”
Lyudmila Denisova, Ukraine's ombudswoman for human rights, said more than 400,000 Ukrainians have been forcibly displaced to Russia since the start of the war.
Tanya Lokshina, the Europe and Central Asia associate director at Human Rights Watch, said forced displacement of people, which is prohibited by the laws of war, doesn’t necessarily mean people were forced into a vehicle at gunpoint, but rather that they found themselves in a situation that left them no choice.
“People are being forcibly displaced from Ukraine,” she said. “They were not enabled to evacuate to a safer place in Ukraine. Many found themselves in a situation when their only option was to cross into Russia or die, as shelling grew more intense.”
Lokshina spoke with two people from the hard-hit Kharkiv region, who told her that as shelling got worse, the Russians strongly suggested they evacuate, making it clear that if they didn’t go, they’d likely soon be killed.
Text messages seen by Devex from people taken to Russia or others who knew of people who were taken said they went because they had no choice with at least one person saying her passport and phone were confiscated when she arrived. A police officer in Zaporizhzhia, who was not authorized to speak to the media, said displaced people arriving from Mariupol also said that those who were unable to evacuate the city had their passports taken and were forced into Russia.
“People are very scared,” he said.
Rights experts said that Ukraine’s conflict is unique in that it’s likely the first in history with so many avenues toward accountability, and if evidence is gathered properly, it has the potential for being used in judicial proceedings to hold people responsible for unlawful attacks more effectively than in previous conflicts.
Vasin of the Institute for Religious Freedom said he spends a lot of time verifying data, conducting interviews with witnesses and religious leaders, and exchanging information with other rights organizations in order to get a complete picture of war crimes being committed and to give the evidence to the International Criminal Court and the Office of the General Prosecutor of Ukraine to investigate.
“We are documenting war crimes to bring Russia to justice and to pay a high price, including in reparations, for every life lost,” he said.
The ICC has already opened an investigation into potential war crimes being committed in the context of the invasion and there are at least five national teams that have also opened investigations into potential war crimes, Belkis Wille, senior crisis and conflict researcher at Human Rights Watch, said.
When gathering evidence, among other things, it’s important for researchers to maintain the contacts of people being interviewed, to try and determine if there were military targets in the area during an attack, and to archive any relevant online content such as photos and videos in line with established standards on collection, preservation, and verification, Wille said
But it’s not always easy documenting abuses during a conflict. Kateryna Cherepakha, president of La Strada-Ukraine — a civil society organization focused on gender-based violence prevention and combating human trafficking among other abuses — said documenting abuses such as sexual violence and rape is hard enough in times of peace, due to worries about shame and stigma and that becomes even harder during a war because people are trying to survive and might not have the possibility to report or institutions might not be able to respond.
But Vasin said perhaps the one silver lining to the violence expanding from the east’s Donetsk and Luhansk regions to the rest of the country, is that Russia can no longer hide its presence or its abuses, which are now taking place on a larger scale for the whole world to see.
“Russia is waging war against the entire people of Ukraine, trying to wipe them off the face of the earth. But, as the whole world can see, the Ukrainians will never surrender,” he said. “After the victory, we will rebuild our destroyed churches and cities, but we will do so at the expense of the Russian people who brought war to our motherland.”
Devex, with support from our partner GHR Foundation, is exploring the intersection between faith and development. Visit the Focus on: Faith and Development page for more. Disclaimer: The views in this article do not necessarily represent the views of GHR Foundation.