Ukraine: Zelenskyy Reports Around 120 Clergy Killed in Russian Attacks since 2022
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that Russian forces have killed around 120 members of the clergy and damaged or destroyed approximately 800 religious sites in Ukraine. His statement comes amid documentation of detention, torture and restrictions on Christian worship in territories under Russian occupation since the beginning of the 2022 war.
On 31 October 2026, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that Russian forces had killed around 120 members of the clergy and damaged or destroyed approximately 800 religious sites since the beginning of the invasion. Speaking in an interview with This Week on Capitol Hill, he alleged that clergy and religious institutions had been deliberately targeted.
Zelenskyy said that some of the damaged buildings were around a thousand years old and had been struck with drones and missiles, including cruise and ballistic missiles. He emphasised the consequences for Ukraine’s religious, historical and cultural heritage, describing losses that could not be remedied through ordinary repairs.
The statement followed the publication, on 30 September 2026, of the International Partnership for Human Rights (IPHR) report Who Is Your God? Religious Terror in the Temporarily Occupied Territories. Drawing on 12 survivor testimonies and 21 witness accounts from Kharkiv, Kherson and Luhansk regions and Crimea, it described occupation authorities monitoring worship, seizing religious property and subjecting clergy and believers to arbitrary detention and torture.
Among the testimonies, a Baptist pastor from Kharkiv Oblast described being beaten and threatened at gunpoint while a soldier told him that only the Russian Orthodox Church would be allowed. An Orthodox protodeacon from Kherson said he was tortured with electricity and forced to write a statement renouncing his priesthood. IPHR linked such practices to attempts to suppress religious communities perceived as disloyal to the occupation and to impose Russian political and religious control.
Source: Libertas Fidei, The Kyiv Independent
Image: Reuters (Valentyn Ogirenko)