Russia Tortures Christians
The story the news media is not telling you about Ukraine is that Russians are torturing and murdering Ukrainian Christians in occupied territories for their faith.
Russians are weaponizing religion.
Protestants are targeted disproportionately. American missionaries have been coming to Ukraine for decades. As a result, Protestants make up about 4% of the Ukrainian population. However, they comprise more than a third of the documented incidents of Russian persecution. At least 26 Christian leaders have been killed for their faith. Among Protestants, Baptists are particularly hard hit. The Ukrainian Baptist Theological Seminary reports the loss of some 400 Baptist congregations since the beginning of the full scale Russian invasion.Why are Protestants being persecuted? To fully understand Russia’s war on Protestants in Ukraine, one must understand that the Russian Orthodox Church is not a church like most Americans understand it, but a working arm of the Kremlin.
Russians often associate Protestants, especially evangelicals, with the United States, leading Russian soldiers to view them as agents of the American government. As a result, they imprison, torture, and, in some cases, kill Protestant believers. One evangelical pastor recounts a Russian Orthodox priest participating in his torture. A Baptist minister recounts how Russian soldiers hunted Protestants who fled occupied Mariupol. The youth pastor of a megachurch that was converted to the Russian Ministry of Culture in occupied Melitopol says “This war is not only about trying to capture Ukrainian territories, land and resources. This is a war against our faith and against our God.”
