Priest Oleg Gorbovsky, member of the Sophia Brotherhood
I am not a sociologist, neither do I work with statistics on the level of religious freedom in the occupied Ukrainian territories, but I have personal experience of living under occupation and fighting the regime there.
We see now the Ukrainian lands being bombarded with fire, the civilian population being killed, and the world is frozen in indecision to give a worthy response to the aggressor, who brings slavery to the neighbours. We are here and now in a free Ukraine because there are people of good will, true Cossacks in spirit, who are doing everything possible and impossible to prevent our northern neighbours from abolishing us right now.
At the same time, every day, to one degree or another, many people under occupation experience a moment of complete spiritual destruction: when, while living in the body, you become dead in the spirit. Right now, more than one generation of Ukrainians who live in the Ukrainian territories occupied by Russia is being spiritually ruined.
What is happening now with Orthodoxy under occupation, with the religious freedom of Orthodox people under occupation? Russian Orthodox Church, on the occupied territories has special task to search for the enemies of Putin, to promote the ideology of the “Russian world” (“Russkiy mir”) and the inferiority of Ukrainians through the so-called preaching. Orthodox Ukrainians under occupation have no religious freedom at all. If a priest refuses to support the aggressive war, to bless people for terrible, diabolical things – he is merely eliminated. These are the realities.
When I was living with my family near the administrative border with Crimea before the full-scale invasion, a person came to my church on Arabat Arrow for a service. She was from the temporarily occupied Crimea, and she strived to visit the Orthodox Church of Ukraine on free Ukrainian land. She would not go to the Moskow Patriarchate church, although there were several of them in the vicinity. After the service she helped us to clean the church and wash the floor – she wanted to thank God for this service, at least by cleaning this church. She told me about the realities of life in the occupied Crimea: that everything there is controlled by Russian Security service, so it is even dangerous to like a post on social media.
Ukrainians feel the same way in the other occupied territories now. This is most evident in religious life: you need to be extremely careful if you want to share your ideas with someone else. Patriotic Ukrainians under occupation are afraid to share with a priest what really hurts their souls.
Today I communicate with people in occupation, having gone through it myself, and I know what I’m talking about. Under Russian occupation, there is no such notion as the secret of confession of sins or the secret of a spiritual conversation with a priest. On the contrary, church is the main promoter of racist ideas.
The trouble is that Ukrainians cannot receive even the basic spiritual assistance in the Orthodox Church in the occupied territory. We must not forget about our fellows under occupation, we must feel their pain, appreciate their experience, we must be always ready to give comfort to them, to help them, to do everything to get them out of trouble.