What if Ukraine Loses the War?

The war in Ukraine has ground on for nearly three years now. Painful reports persist of the continuing loss of life. “Meat grinders” is the term used for the massacres of recent recruits across the front lines.

Journalists in Western and Eastern Europe are publishing their views on how the war might end.  American writers are also sharing their perspectives with a particular focus on the upcoming American presidential election.  

In both the US and European capitals, military and political experts are weighing how a Russian victory would reshape the global order and favor adversaries of the United States. According to the highly respected Institute for the Study of War (ISW), among other potential realities, Russia would claim its right to expand its sphere of influence and would control people any way it wants, often subjecting them to perpetual atrocities. 

ISW experts describe “an ugly world” in which “Russia winning in Ukraine would result in a world accepting the Russian way of war and life. . . If Russia wins, many horrific practices that the Kremlin is trying to justify will be normalized.”  A playbook for “digesting” a nation by eradicating its identity is already underway in the Russian occupied territories of Ukraine, including forceful deportation of thousands of Ukrainian children to Russia, some to the far eastern regions of Siberia.

The secular news media in the West has paid little attention to what Russian occupation forces in southern Ukraine have done to suppress freedom of religion. The U. S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) ranks Russia “among the world’s religious persecutors of greatest concern.”  Putin promotes Russia as a “Christian nation,” and too many Americans blindly repeat this assertion. If Ukraine loses the war, Russia can extend its violent crackdowns on all the religious institutions in Ukraine, and possibly beyond the Ukrainian borders. Russia may try to expand its reach into neighboring states, as Putin has threatened. 

If Americans turn their back on Ukraine’s plight and become advocates of isolationism, not only will Ukraine’s future be jeopardized, its model as a democratic nation that cherishes religious freedom and celebrates religious diversity could be crushed.

Most Americans do not know that Ukraine has the largest population of Evangelicals in Europe, estimated to number between 800,000 and one million. Andriy Yermak, an adviser to President Zelensky, calls Ukraine “the Bible Belt of Eastern Europe.”  A recent National Prayer Breakfast in Kyiv, modeled after the annual President’s Prayer Breakfast in Washington, D.C., is an indication of their efforts to cultivate American support for their struggle against Russia’s continuing attacks. 

Mission Eurasia’s reports on religious freedom in Ukraine, available on their website, make it clear that “almost all non-Orthodox churches in occupied territories were stripped of their right to hold church services.”  Most of us are not aware of the scale of the destruction of evangelical churches in occupied regions of Ukraine. Of the more than 600 religious sites damaged or destroyed by Russian missiles, suicide drones, and artillery strikes, 94 were Ukrainian Pentecostal facilities, 60 were prayer houses of Evangelical Christians-Baptist, and 27 were facilities built by Seventh Day Adventists.

The evangelical churches were targeted because often they have relationships with Western religious organizations, which means they are “enemies of the people” — possible Western spies – or labeled “extremists” for praying in Ukrainian. PBS News Hour reported that when Russian forces come into an occupied area and see Protestant churches, they assume that they must be agents of the U.S. government. “They go into the churches. They shut them down.They frequently torture the pastor, and, sometimes, they murder believers for their faith. And we know of 29 Christian leaders who have been murdered in Ukraine by the Russians.”

The Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church now has no clergy left in the Russian-occupied zones. In Zaporizhzhia, for example, Russian authorities banned all Greek Catholic churches, as well as Caritas and the Knights of Columbus, Catholic aid organizations. All their property was transferred to the Russian authorities. All church leases were terminated, and its priests are no longer allowed to provide church leadership.

If Ukraine loses the war, people of faith must understand the true character of the Russian threat to Ukraine and its supporting neighbors. If the Russian colonial empire – the last colonial empire in Europe — survives this conflict, the freedom of religion that is practiced in Ukraine will be destroyed. The next targets of Russian aggression could be Ukraine’s NATO allies. 

It is vital that Ukraine’s current supporters ask why the West, with a combined GDP of $60 trillion, thirty times that of Russia according to Professor Timothy Ash, has been unable to give Ukraine the support it needs to bring a speedy victory. It is Ash’s opinion that “Ukraine’s continued survival against the overwhelming odds owes move to the bravery of Ukrainians than the support it has received from the West.” 

I would only add that the bravery and the commitment of the Ukrainians to build a democratic nation with freedom of religion will be a pillar of strength and stability in Europe.