OSLO, Norway (BP) — Russia seriously violates religious freedom in the land it illegally occupies in Ukraine, Forum 18 said in a new report.

Torturing and killing pastors and priests, prosecuting residents for exercising religious freedom, banning worship and entire religious communities, closing churches, prosecuting missionaries and banning Scripture as extremist literature are among the most egregious atrocities Forum 18 cited in its March religious freedom survey of occupied Ukraine.

The survey echoes findings from the U.S. Department of State in its latest (2023) report on international religious freedom, reports from the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, and reports from several groups that monitor international religious freedom or serve Christians in Ukraine, including Mission Eurasia’s 2025 “Faith Under Russian Terror” report released at the 2025 International Religious Freedom Summit in February.

“The fundamental cause of freedom of religion or belief and other human rights violations in Russian-occupied Ukrainian territory is Russia’s invasion and occupation from 2014 onwards of Ukraine,” Forum 18 wrote. “Until Russia’s occupation of Ukrainian territory is ended, the freedom of religion or belief and other human rights violations seem set to continue.”

Since Russia’s invasion in February 2022, it has also illegally annexed additional territory, now occupying a fifth of Ukraine, Forum 18 said.

The report comes as efforts to reach a peace agreement with Russia have included U.S. speculations that Russia would retain the land it illegally occupies in Ukraine, although no agreement has been reached.

Russia attacked Ukraine’s energy infrastructure with dozens of missiles and drones late March 6 and into the next morning, the Associated Press (AP) reported March 7, killing at least 10 individuals, striking residences and cutting power to homes as well as weapons factories.

Concurrently, the Trump administration suspended military aid and intelligence to Ukraine, including access to satellite imagery that could help Ukraine answer Russia’s fire, the AP said, citing sources at the U.S. National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency.

Peace talks are set to resume next week, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced March 6, with Saudi Arabia hosting Zelenskyy and President Donald Trump.

Religious freedom in Ukraine and the spread of the gospel in Europe rests largely upon the resolution of the war, Baptist leaders in the region have told Baptist Press (BP).

“This is not only a war of Russia against Ukraine,” Igor Bandura, vice president of the All-Ukrainian Union of Churches of Evangelical Christians-Baptists, maintained in a December 2023 interview with Baptist Press. “This is a war for Christian values, for the possibility to spread the gospel in freedom and to fulfill the Great Commission of the Lord Jesus.”

“You should remember the spiritual dimensions of this war, especially the attempt of the evil one to use Russia to destroy Ukraine as a goalpost for Christianity in Eastern Europe,” Bandura said as U.S. aid to Ukraine was in jeopardy.

Others have noted the loss of religious freedom in the Russian occupied territory, including Ukrainian Baptist Theological Seminary President Yarsolav “Slavik” Pyzh, Ukrainian journalists who visited the U.S. last year and Mission Eurasia.

Forum 18 documents numerous crimes and violations of religious freedoms in its report, beginning with Russia’s occupation in 2014.

While specific numbers were not cited, the report notes that many religious leaders were murdered, arrested, “disappeared” without information of their location or tortured for practicing their religion or refusing to register their congregations with the Russian Orthodox Church.

But Mission Eurasia, in its “Faith Under Russian Terror” report, tallied 47 Ukrainian religious leaders killed since Russia’s 2022 invasion, including 12 Baptists, 18 from the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate), eight Pentecostals, seven from the Orthodox Church of Ukraine and two Adventists.

Among those Forum 18 listed as murder victims were Stepan Podolchak, a 59-year-old priest of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine in Kalanchak, a village in Russian-occupied Kherson Region, whose body was found on the street on Feb. 15, 2024; and Pentecostal deacon Anatoly Prokopchuk, 52, and his 19-year-old son Aleksandr Prokopchuk, also of Kherson, whose mutilated bodies were found in a nearby wooded area, Forum 18 said.

Many of those arrested are taken to prisons in Russia. In one of the most recent cases Forum 18 cited, in mid-February, prison authorities in Russian-occupied Crimea transferred Ukrainian Orthodox priest Kostiantyn Maksimov to a strict labor camp in Russia’s Saratov Region, placing him in quarantine for two weeks. He was originally arrested in May 2023 without explanation and held in a secret location for 10 months, Forum 18 said, before being tried under false charges of espionage for opposing the Russian Orthodox Church.

Maksimov is imprisoned more than 600 miles from the Russian-occupied Ukrainian town of Tokmak in the Zaporizhzhia Region, where he served as a priest.

Forum 18’s report is available here.

(EDITOR’S NOTE — Diana Chandler is Baptist Press’ senior writer.)