Breakaway churches, spiritual awakenings, prayers in captivity. How war is changing Ukraine’s faith

December 13, 2024

By Ukraine

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For a decade, the world has seen how Russia has scarred Ukraine’s landscape with tens of thousands of bombs and missiles. The spiritual wounds — and awakenings — experienced by millions of Ukrainians are less visible.

Almost a third of Ukrainians say their religious faith has grown since the war broke out, according to a survey conducted last year by the Razumkov Center, a public policy think tank based in Kyiv. Others say their belief has never been more tested.

To better understand how the Russian invasion has changed Ukrainians’ relationship with their faith, the Kyiv Independent spoke with dozens of Ukrainians from various regions and creeds.

Among them are a Greek-Catholic Chaplain performs who confessions at the frontlines; an Orthodox woman who was branded a “traitor” by her pro-Russian priest for renouncing the Moscow church; and a Muslim Mufti who put on a uniform to “practice what he preaches.”

Here are six stories of faith, questioning, and transformation.

Editor’s Note: These first-person narratives have been adapted from transcripts of interviews by the Kyiv Independent. They have been edited for length and clarity and translated into English from Ukrainian, but all of the words are from those we interviewed.

`Yaroslav Buno, 39, Lviv Oblast,`

`‘Every chaplain is a psychologist’`

Yaroslav Buno grew up in a Greek Catholic household in western Ukraine, where Christianity has traditionally been stronger than in the east. Inspired by his local priest’s work with youth, he entered seminary school at age 17. When the full-scale invasion began, his village’s church welcomed refugees from the east and started collecting military aid. Though priests have been embedded with units since 2014, Ukraine created the chaplaincy service as an official division of the military in 2023. After volunteer visits to the frontline, Buno joined a military unit as a chaplain in April of this year.

It was the funerals. The funerals of our boys. I still see their mothers.

Everything changed for me, my system of values changed. The more I saw the consequences of the war, the more I wanted to do more. I realized I had to be in the east, at the front. I couldn’t just sit home and watch. I called my wife and said, I want to become a military chaplain. God was calling.

I had to get the commander’s consent, take an oath, and then it was official.

When I went to the front for the first time, I was afraid. It’s war, after all.

But I was also afraid because it was a new ministry for me. They weren’t my parishioners back in the village. They’re soldiers who have lived and seen a lot, who have wounds of war, their own ethical codes.

I’d never been in such an environment. I asked my commanders what I should do. They didn’t know either.

Another priest told me, Don't be afraid, be yourself. Talk about God's word. Do what you have always done.

I’m not a robot. Every day I experience disappointment, fear, doubt. This is inherent in every person. And a priest is not immune either. What matters is how you handle it.

I remind myself of what Christ lived through. How Christ suffered. How he got up when he couldn’t go on. His example gives me solace.

I remember the first time I was with the soldiers. Spring of this year. They laughed a little bit when I ducked from the explosions. For them it was so normal, familiar. But, as they say, everyone gets used to it.

I celebrated the liturgy. Later some of the guys thanked me. I said I hadn't done anything. They said, For being here. Even my presence could be some kind of support. I became even more convinced that a priest should be with soldiers at the front.

The Greek Catholic church has been closely intertwined with liberation in the history of the Ukrainian people. When families gather for holidays, there are songs dedicated to those events. In every village and parish, there are symbolic graves dedicated to the liberation movement. National memory, patriotic education, and religious education go hand in hand.

In the chaplaincy ministry, there are priests and monks who were imprisoned, exiled to Siberia (during Soviet times), and so on for their pro-Ukrainian views.

I try to hold services for all major Christian holidays. It's not easy, because the unit is often scattered over different territories. And we try not to make a crowd. All is done secretly.

The chaplain’s task isn’t just religious rites. Every chaplain is a psychologist. He listens, tries to be a friend, shows compassion.

Not everyone is ready to talk about God. Guys just want to relieve stress with a simple conversation. To joke, talk about the weather, everyday life, delicious food.

Of course, part of what falls to the priest is confessions. The most intimate conversation the guys have.

To kill a person, even in war, is not good. But the enemy who comes to our land has made a choice.

What our guys are doing is not a sin or immoral. They realize that if they don’t stop the enemy in the east, he’ll be in the west, in the center, in the north, and in the south the day after tomorrow.

They know they can die. Each of them has lost comrades. They know they could be next. Everyone has a family, has children. Everyone wants to live. But there is no other way out.

The cross that every warrior bears is self-sacrifice. But the chaplain sometimes carries the soldier’s cross, his feelings, depression, emotions. It becomes easier for the warrior after a conversation with his chaplain. Even when he hears no answers to his questions.

`Nadia Kaminska, 48, Dnipropetrovsk Oblast: ‘What kind of church do you have here? Is it under Moscow?’`

Orthodox Christians are the largest religious group in Ukraine — more than 70% of Ukrainians identified as Orthodox Christian according to one 2022 survey.

When the full-scale invasion broke out in 2022, Nadia Kaminska stopped attending the only church in her village in central Ukraine because of its ties to Moscow. Her congregation has since voted to transfer their parish from the Russian-linked Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) to the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU), which was granted self-governance from the Moscow Patriarchate in 2019 by the spiritual leadership that oversees both branches.

More than a thousand other congregations have made the same transition since 2022, while over 8,000 were still under Moscow’s influence as of May. At some Moscow-affiliated churches, the Ukrainian government has uncovered ties to the Russian state and security services.

But for the past year, Nadia and her fellow parishioners have been praying in a room in a community center. UOC leadership has barred them from holding OCU services in their village’s church. The community is waiting for the local government authorities to recognize their vote and let them gather there.

I have been a parishioner of this church since 2018. I live next door.

When I came to my first Sunday sermon, I was surprised. Father Serhei Frolov was a Ukrainophobe. For him, Russia is Russia, a great power. And Ukraine? No such country. There is only Russia.

I realized I would not have a connection with him. I was born in Russia but have lived here since I was three. To me, Russia was an aggressor that attacked my country and took away Crimea.

But I was going through a difficult time. I needed a church, I needed the sacraments.

Before 2014, the church was full. People poured their hearts into it. By the time I started coming, it was empty. There were about fifteen of us.

People with different views than Father Serhei had left. They built this church. And they had to leave it. It was difficult for people whose loved ones are fighting for us, to hear during a sermon that Russia isn’t at war with us. That the enemy is the West.

When the full-scale invasion began in February, I went to church in the morning with my husband and my hope. Hope that this priest would see the light, realize none of what he said was true, and say, Forgive me, we are at war, yes, Russia is an enemy.

But we didn’t hear that. We heard, Don’t watch, don’t listen to anything, just pray and wait.

Wait for the Russians? I couldn’t stay. I left and couldn’t return.

People were scared, disoriented. At such moments, people need the presence of God. And the people in this village, who built that church and wanted to go to that church? They were deprived.

I talked to internally displaced people who needed a church. They asked, What kind of church do you have here? Is it under Moscow?

I would say, I’m sorry, it’s a Moscow church.

Two weeks later, I got a call from our priest, Serhei. He said that, even if they put a machine gun to his temple, he would never renounce Kirill, the Patriarch of the Moscow Church. He hoped I’d take his side. I told him Kirill is not my patriarch.

Six months after the invasion, Father Serhei left. I was at the last service. He talked about traitors. He looked me in the eye, saying I’d renounced the church. I didn’t feel like a traitor. I didn’t renounce Christ.

Then a new priest came. I came to vespers and when we — five people and the priest — gathered, I said Let’s transfer to the Orthodox Church of Ukraine.

The priest said “We will do what the church leadership tells us to.” The church is not governed by parishioners, but by pro-Russian leaders.

We asked people, How would you feel about a Ukrainian church in our village, a church that has never cooperated with Russia? People said, We’re for it.

We have a law that allows parishioners to vote on transferring.

On May 14 last year, we invited everyone to a meeting in the center of the village. I got a phone call from another priest who, let’s say, threatened me. It didn’t stop us.

Ninety people voted in favor of transferring. Unanimous vote.

But the Russian church doesn’t accept the Orthodox Church of Ukraine. They say we’re schismatics and won’t let us hold services in the church. The local authorities won’t force them to leave.

So we organized a little space here in the cultural building.

We started services again. We didn’t have icons, anything.

My husband came to the first service. It was held in Ukrainian. In my village, liturgies in our beautiful language! I cried.

My former friends cut us off. For me, they aren’t enemies. They just got a little confused. They don’t study history. But what does God teach? People change.

I would like our village church to become Ukrainian. I want to return. But only when it has a different atmosphere.

Editor’s note: After this interview, Natalia’s church was told the community room was no longer available and they would need to hold services in the corridor.

`Said Ismagilov, 46, Donetsk Oblast:`

`‘When you find yourself at war, you understand the scriptures’`

Muslims make up around 1% of Ukraine’s population. Exact figures are hard to come by as the largest group is in Crimea, where around 13% of residents were estimated to be Muslim prior to its annexation by Russia in 2014.

Under Stalin’s rule in the 1940s, ethnic Crimean Tatars — around half of Ukraine’s Muslims — were deported en masse from their home in Crimea to remote areas of Central Asia and Siberia, in what Ukraine and Tatars deem a genocide. Many returned decades later, only to flee religious persecution and Russia’s rule after the country annexed the peninsula.

Said Ismahilov was one of the top Muslim spiritual leaders in Ukraine before the war began. He moved from his home in occupied Donetsk to Bucha after the 2014 invasion. When Russian troops invaded Bucha in 2022, he moved again, this time to Kyiv. He left his position as Mufti to serve as a volunteer on the front, then joined the Ukrainian military and continues to serve today. When the war ends, he dreams of building a memorial engraved with the names of all the Muslim men and women who died defending Ukraine.

I came to the mosque (in Kyiv) on the second day of the full-scale war. There was no one there. Only an elderly guard, a non-Muslim. They had all fled. It was such a disappointment.

When I was elected Mufti on Jan. 25, 2009, I set the goal of creating a Muslim community in Ukraine.

The majority of Muslims here moved from elsewhere. Even Crimean Tatars, about half of Ukraine’s Muslims, returned from deportation.

My goal was to educate the Muslim immigrants, so they feel Ukrainian. To fight together with other Ukrainians.

But the people I worked with ran to Europe, the United States, Canada, anywhere. This shocked me in the first months of the war — damn it, I taught you to love Ukraine! And when it got bad for this country where you lived, got married, had children, ran your business — it turns out you don’t need the country.

Okay, if you’re not ready to fight, it’s on your conscience. But I cannot sit and pray in an empty mosque. I had to put on a uniform and practice what I preach. If I have taught that to people for 20 years, I have to go, even if I am alone. Either I lied when I called people to do something I didn’t believe in, or I have to defend my homeland.

I volunteered and became a paramedic. We evacuated the wounded under fire. I stopped being a Mufti, I’m now just an ordinary Muslim like anyone else. But if there was no one to pray for the dead, I had to do it.

Most of the Muslims who went to defend Ukraine were Crimean Tatars and Ukrainian-born. I met them at the front often.

Religious and military service are different — like earth and sky. It’s good to teach people in a warm, safe mosque. But when you’re being shot at, carrying the wounded, when it’s cold, muddy, or too hot — then it’s harder to live up to your ideals.

I discovered I’m not afraid. They can shoot at me, kill someone nearby. I am not afraid.

In Islam, a man’s duty is to be a soldier. It’s a sin if he doesn’t protect his family. We believe we die on the day and time chosen by God. No earlier, no later. Even if a hundred people shoot at me, if I’m not destined to die today, I won’t.

I didn’t hear such questions at the front, but I heard it in the rear: How did God allow this? I have a simple answer. Do not blame your sins on God, you allowed the war to begin.

God will not take up a Kalashnikov and fight in your place. It isn’t his task. God created you, gave you land to live here, freedom of choice, commanded you to be honest, righteous, and to protect yourself from the enemy.

When someone shifts responsibility to God, I say we are adults, responsible for ourselves. What does God have to do with it?

When I was a Mufti, everyone pestered me. Journalists, visitors, students. Why in the world does the Koran always talk about war? Because they didn’t know what war was.

And when people found themselves in war, they understood why the Koran had verses about taking up weapons.

When you find yourself at war, you understand the scriptures.

In Islam, there are special prayers against the enemy. For the enemy to weaken, to perish. Prayers that are read when someone is afraid they will die or be taken prisoner.

Before, I didn’t read them. I had no reason. Now there’s a need for those prayers.

Now, my prayers are less about civilian life, which I don’t remember at all.

`Natalia Dubchak, 62, Kyiv Oblast:`

`‘I went to confession for the first time right after my son died’`

Natalia Dubchak returned to her family in Ukraine from Russia after the Soviet Union collapsed. She raised her children as a single mother, serving in the military until 2012. Her son was killed in 2015 fighting to defend against Russia’s 2014 invasion of Crimea and Donbas. She has organized and led church-backed support groups for other women whose sons have died in the fighting. She continues her work from her home in Bucha, which she fled for three months to escape the massacres under Russian occupation.

Around 4,400 Ukrainian fighters died during the eight years of war in eastern Ukraine before Russia launched its full-scale invasion in 2022. As of December 2024, at least 43,000 more Ukrainian soldiers have been killed, according to President Volodymyr Zelenksy, though many estimate the true total to be much higher.

“I went to confession for the first time right after my son died. I was already an adult, about 52, and I realized that we all have sins. We don’t always consider them sins. I have a lot of them — abortion, adultery in the eyes of the church — but I was very surprised by the church’s tolerant attitude. No one shamed me. No one said, Oh, how could you do that? It was shocking, in a good way. When I left the confessional, I cried for a half hour. I felt as if I’d been cleansed from the inside.

When a son or daughter dies, parents — and mothers especially — often think, God punished me. We look for the reason for our child’s death. Others are back to living their lives, surviving the war, but my child died. Maybe it was something I said, or something I thought…

But confession made me understand, in simple, ordinary words, that it wasn’t my fault.

My son Sasha was an ardent atheist. He didn’t want to read about God. He didn’t believe — that was it.

But when he came back on his first military leave, I asked him how he felt about God now. He said, Mom, when you’re in a trench under fire, you pray with any words you can think of. There are no non-believers in the trenches, he said.

He went to serve when the war started in 2014. I was planning to return to the service because I was only 50 and a career soldier. But he said, It’s enough for one of us to serve.

Sashko died in 2015. In 2014, many families began losing loved ones, and the question of how to care for them became an issue.

There weren't many NGOs to help us back then, and the state didn't know what to do with us. No one needed us.

The church was the first institution to lend a shoulder.

And so, when church leaders said, We would like you to help us take care of the families, to gather them so we could support them, I agreed.

Now we have 28 support groups in Ukraine. When we started seven years ago, we were the first.

We have monthly meetings, first for liturgy, then for informal communication with a psychologist, with a confessor, one another. Tea, coffee.

We celebrate birthdays and the anniversary of the death of loved ones.

I can't say that I'm a 100% religious person. I don't follow all the rules in the faith but I try to live as a decent person. The commandments, you know: thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not kill. I follow them.

But I'm not 100% a believer. The word "spirituality" is what keeps me near the church. I feel this support from within.

When everything is good, when nothing happens in your life, you don't think about the fact that faith exists. When something happens and we need support, we remember the Lord, ask him for advice, make promises.

The families of the fallen are in this situation.

We are their role models. Families now come to our group and wonder, Is this how I will be in 10 years?

It turns out that life goes on. It’s possible not just to exist, but also to live.

We aren’t eternal. We die. That's why you have to live, be happy about small things, which is what I try to do. I have the opportunity to work a little more, I have enough money for bread and butter. What more can I ask for?

When I thought about death, I used to get shivers down my spine and immediately drove the thoughts away. They scared me. Now I understand how long the average life in Ukraine really is.

I’ll be 62 in a week. I hope I have 10 more years.

I can't say whether I believe in an afterlife.

No one has been. No one knows.

I hope it’s true that only the body dies, but the soul doesn’t. My son died, my father died.

For me, death is a meeting with my family.

`Valentyn Postrelko, 75, Kyiv Oblast:`

`‘We pray for my boys every time’`

The history of Ukraine’s Jewish community stretches back more than a thousand years. Ukraine is the birthplace of the Hasidic Jewish movement, played a key role in the development of Yiddish modern literature, and is home to more than a thousand Jewish heritage sites. Ukrainian Jews both flourished and experienced persecution during different periods up until the Holocaust, before which Ukraine was one of the largest Jewish centers in Europe. Many researchers estimate the death toll of Ukrainian Jews during the Holocaust to be over a million, with some estimates as high as 1.6 million.

Jews continued to emigrate in the decades that followed. Today, Ukraine still only has a fraction of the Jewish population it had at its peak, but since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Ukraine’s Jewish community has been rebuilding and rejuvenating. Estimates vary, but experts believe the number of Jews who still call Ukraine their home is now in the tens of thousands.

Valentyn Postrelko, like many in Ukraine’s Jewish community, is returning to a faith that has deep familial roots but was diminished in recent times.

I was born in Kyiv, I will be 75 years old in December. I was brought up in Soviet times, when religion was disregarded. Now it’s important.

When there is such a big war and your family has two sons at the front, you turn to God. And God is the same for Jews, Muslims, and for Christians.

Everyone has their own Golgotha, when they come to God. My time has come.

How did I get to be religious? Three or four years ago, I set myself a goal of making a memorial sign for the victims of the Holocaust.

The Association of Jewish Communities helped me finance it. We reconstructed an old Jewish cemetery. My grandmother and uncle were shot there.

And then I slowly began to visit the rabbi. I came to the synagogue. I like it there. People treat me well, and I treat them well. In any religion, a person should treat another humanely.

Every Saturday when we gather, we pray for my boys to come back alive and healthy. I talk to them almost every evening. One is 34 and the other 45. They volunteered to defend Ukraine in the first days of the war.

Earlier, many Jews left the country because there were negative attitudes towards them. They left for countries with better treatment.

I’ve seen these attitudes improve in Ukraine. Many Jews are coming back. The Ukrainian people elected a Jewish president, so what issues can there be?

To be a Jew in Ukraine today, I believe you are a citizen of this country, so this is your country.

There is a Russian translation of the Torah, but there has never been a Ukrainian translation. The Jewish community in Dnipro initiated a translation. This is very important for our country, especially now.

There is a group of translators and reviewers. I was tasked to help with editing because I speak exclusively Ukrainian. We are in Ukraine. We should have the Torah in Ukrainian.

Now in the synagogue, our rabbi reads the Torah in Hebrew, and I read (draft translations in) Ukrainian.

I have been working in psychiatry for 40 years. I studied in Russia. And I still ask the question, Why did this happen? How? For people to be turned into such beasts, that they did what they did in Bucha and Irpin.

I had a client practice in Bucha before the war, I treated soldiers after 2014. So I went there in the first days after its liberation. I saw it. The hospital was ruined. By April 2022, I was treating soldiers there again.

The air raid alarm sounded all night last night. You understand that this is a war. I could go abroad. But my boys are at war, and I will not go anywhere.

`Vladyslav Makhovskyi, 50, Zaporizhzhia Oblast:`

`‘I prayed hardest when I was in captivity’`

Baptists are one of the oldest and largest Evangelical Christian groups in Ukraine, and have been in the country since the 1800s. They once formed the largest Baptist community outside of the United States, though their numbers have since declined. Ukraine’s Head of the Presidential Office Andriy Yermak wrote in an op-ed for the Hill that there are an estimated 800,000 to 1 million evangelical Christians in Ukraine.

Vladyslav Makhovskyi grew up non-religious, like many who were born during the Soviet Union when religion was suppressed and discouraged by Soviet authorities. He converted to evangelicalism at age 25. Six years ago, he became a pastor.

Since 2014, I’ve been volunteering, evacuating, helping people in the war zone. I've been going once or twice a week. Sometimes I’m scared, but I have to go.

The main goal was to support churches and help people form new churches. We started forming churches near Avdiivka, but the Russians destroyed them.

The first time I entered the territory controlled by the occupiers, I evacuated people and got out. The second time, I was detained by one of the Russian militant groups fighting Ukraine. This was 2014. They interrogated me for six days. Took my car, documents, everything. But they let me go.

I prayed hardest when I was in captivity. Every day, every night, because they were torturing me. Relying on God gave me strength. And when I got out, I thanked God for guiding me through this.

At the beginning of the full-scale war, I was in Zaporizhzhia. I chose to stay. Those were difficult days; the Russians were close. So we started to take our church members and families with children to western Ukraine. And also to help people who were even nearer to the approaching Russians.

We drove three or four buses to Vasylivka, to bring aid and evacuate children. We were asked to. When we were getting closer, we saw military equipment. When we got even closer, we saw the letter ‘Z.' They stopped us, searched us, held us, but then turned us around and let us go. They had other tasks.

I went to occupied territories several times to evacuate children until they closed everything.

This February in Avdiivka, I came under fire. A first-person-view drone hit me. It was 800 meters from the Russians. I got shrapnel wounds on my right leg. My car wouldn’t start. I walked about a kilometer in a state of shock and was evacuated to the city.

I don’t think I’d be doing this if I were not a believer. Faith changed me. Gave me a vocation to help people.

Now we’re helping displaced people. Many of them come to our church. This year, several were baptized. When things get difficult, people turn to God and the church grows.

Many of the ministers I know weren’t believers as children. I was raised a non-believer. I was involved in drugs, have a criminal record. The first time I came to the Baptist church, in 1999, the service was already going on. I stood in the doorway and watched. And then one lady invited me in, offered me a seat, so I listened to the sermons. I felt such love, such acceptance.

When I was captured for the first time in 2014, they had such a negative attitude toward the Baptists. There was a soldier who came wearing a cross. I started saying I was a believer, a Christian. He came at me with a knife. He showed me the cross and said, This is the true God. Your faith is an enemy faith, the faith of American spies.

Note from the authors:

Hi there from Natalia and Andrea, the co-authors of this piece. Thank you for reading our article! As we traveled across Ukrainian communities to talk about religion, we saw that it was more important than ever to highlight a deep, unnoticed impact of almost three years of Russia's war on Ukraine. If you'd like to see more stories like this one, please consider supporting our work with a monthly or one-time donation. By becoming a member or donating, you can help us continue telling the world the truth about this war.