Vladyslav Havrylov presented testimony to USCIRF regarding the use of the Russian Orthodox Church as an instrument of war crimes against Ukrainian children.
Testimony of Vladyslav Havrylov
INTRODUCTION
My name is Vladyslav Havrylov. I am a researcher and religious scholar from Kyiv, Ukraine. From childhood from the age of 12 I have been a member of the Orthodox Church. I later studied at the Kyiv Theological Seminary and the St. Petersburg Theological Academy, which I left in 2015 due to my disagreement with Russia’s policy toward Ukraine following the annexation of Crimea in 2014. I subsequently obtained a master’s degree in Church History (Taras Shevchenko National University in Kyiv) and in religious studies (National Pedagogical Dragomanov University), and I am currently working on my PhD about children during the Russo-Ukrainian War.
From 2026, I am a Global Fellow with the Collaborative on Global Children’s Issues at Georgetown University, where I was previously a 2024-2025 Collaborative Fellow and a 2023-2024 Research Fellow; my work has focused on the forcible transfer, deportation, adoption, and reeducation of Ukrainian children by Russia. Since October 2025, I am also collaborating with King’s College London as a Research Consultant at the Leverhulme Centre for Research on Slavery in War.
I also serve in the field of Christian and evangelical mission, as a missionary, and I am the Head of the Section for Research and Analytical Work, International Advocacy, and the Establishment of International Religious Relations of the Religious Brotherhood of the Blessed Hetman Petro Konashevych-Sahaidachny of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine.
Following the outbreak of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, I began researching the crimes of the Russian Federation against children in the occupied territories of Ukraine, as well as against religious communities that are being persecuted. I was struck by the scale of these atrocities. In this regard, I am honored to present the following facts before this Commission.
SECTION 1: THE RUSSIAN ORTHODOX CHURCH AS AN INSTRUMENT OF IDEOLOGICAL CONTROL
1.1 The Role of the Russian Orthodox Church in Promoting the Ideology of the ‘Russkiy Mir’ Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) has emerged as a key instrument of state propaganda and ideological control. The ROC actively justifies and supports the invasion of sovereign Ukrainian territory, the destruction of cities, the torture of civilians, and the mass deportation of Ukrainian citizens to the Russian Federation – including children.
The ideological foundation for these actions is the concept of the so-called “Russkiy Mir” (Russian World), jointly developed by the Russian government and the ROC leadership. One of the earliest official references to this concept appeared in President Vladimir Putin’s address to the Federal Assembly in 2007. Patriarch Kirill of Moscow – who leads the ROC – has publicly described the “Russkiy Mir” as a unique civilization rooted in the “Kyivan baptismal font,” encompassing the present-day territories of Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus. This ideology serves as a convenient instrument for Russia to justify its invasion of Ukraine and to claim canonical authority over Ukrainian Orthodox communities.
Within this doctrine, the criminal intentions of the Russian aggressor are disguised under the pseudo-values of Russian culture, language, and Orthodox faith. In his sermons, Patriarch Kirill has referred to Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine as “sacred,” has justified Russian war criminals, and has directly participated in appointing Russian clergy to full-time positions as military chaplains embedded in Russian military units. International Christian leaders – including representatives of Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant denominations issued a declaration condemning the doctrine of the “Russkiy Mir” as heretical and as one of the ideological foundations of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
1.2 Clergy of the Russian Orthodox Church Promoting the War Against Ukraine The Russian Orthodox Church is thoroughly and intentionally collaborating with the Russian government in waging a full-scale war against Ukraine. This criminal partnership manifests across two dimensions: ideological propaganda promoting pro-Putin narratives through official statements and sermons of Russian church hierarchs – and direct practical involvement, including the deployment of clergy as military chaplains embedded within Russian combat units. Russian clergy in combat zones, by siding with the Russian aggressor, actively promote aggression and the killing of Ukrainians, spread Russian propaganda, and attempt to elevate Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to the level of a religious war – a crusade for the salvation of so-called ‘true Orthodoxy’.
The ‘Russian World’ concept championed by Patriarch Kirill and his subordinates has been condemned as heretical by Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, yet the ROC leadership has shown no intention of withdrawing its theological legitimization of Russian war crimes.
A prominent figure known for his anti-Ukrainian rhetoric and direct support for the Russian aggressor is Archpriest Andrei Tkachev. Beginning during Ukraine’s Revolution of Dignity, Tkachev described the Maidan protests as “demonic possession”. Following Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, he explicitly called for bombing Ukrainian civilians using the “Grad” multiple-launch rocket system, justifying these actions through pseudo-religious framing. As a result, Ukraine imposed personal sanctions on him. Tkachev is not an isolated case – Archpriest Artemiy Vladimirov has similarly referred to Ukrainians as “fascists” and described Russia’s invasion as the beginning of “de-fascization” of Europe.
The Russian Ministry of Defense has established a dedicated unit for interaction with believers within the armed forces, and the ROC has actively sought to legitimize the involvement of clergy in combat operations through legal mechanisms. President Putin posthumously awarded the title of Hero of Russia to Archpriest Mikhail Vasilyev – a military chaplain killed in the combat zone in Ukraine – further demonstrating direct Kremlin support for the ROC’s participation in the war.
1.3 The Russian Orthodox Church and the Forcible Deportation of Ukrainian Children One of the most alarming dimensions of the ROC’s role in Russia’s war crimes is its direct involvement in the forcible deportation of Ukrainian children. In close cooperation with the Russian government, the ROC has been involved in the forced transfer of Ukrainian children to the territory of the Russian Federation, placing them in church charitable homes, monasteries, and recreational camps.
In 2017, Patriarch Kirill of Moscow signed a cooperation agreement with the head of Russia’s Ministry of Emergency Situations. Immediately after the full-scale invasion began in February 2022, Bishop Panteleimon of the ROC’s Synodal Department for Charity and Social Service met with senior officials of the Russian Emergencies Ministry to coordinate the so-called “evacuation” in reality, the forcible deportation of Ukrainians from occupied territories. The ROC’s Department of Church Charity and Social Service received detailed logistical documents: train schedules for transporting deportees and files with information on the distribution of evacuees in temporary accommodation centers.
The ROC also created a dedicated fundraising website to collect money to keep deported Ukrainians – including children – in these temporary accommodation centers in Russia. According to the Children of War platform, approximately 744,000 children have been deported based on open-source data announced by the Russian Federation. Among the documented locations of deported Ukrainian children are church institutions of the Russian Orthodox Church, including the Assumption Monastery of the Tver Diocese, the diocesan mother and child center in Belgorod, and the Kovalevsky orphanage of the Kostroma Diocese.
The scale of the ROC’s logistical involvement in the deportation process is documented through leaked internal communications. The Department of Church Charity and Social Service of the Russian Orthodox Church received detailed operational documents: train schedules for transporting deportees to Russian territory, statistics from the FSB Border Guard Service on the number of individuals crossing the border, and files specifying the distribution of deportees across temporary accommodation centers. Polina Yuferyeva, who coordinates the ROC’s emergency assistance sector and works closely with Russia’s Ministry of Emergency Situations, was directly included in correspondence detailing the number of deported Ukrainians and the locations of their future resettlement. Critically, Bishop Panteleimon personally instructed ROC employees not to refer to these individuals as deportees, but instead as ‘refugees from Donbas’ and ‘refugees from the conflict zone’ – a deliberate terminological obfuscation designed to conceal the criminal nature of the deportation. By November 2022, the number of ROC dioceses involved in receiving deported Ukrainians had grown from 30 to 58, with church institutions collectively holding deportees across the Russian Federation. The fundraising infrastructure established by the ROC collected at least 249.3 million rubles for this purpose by November 2022 alone.
SECTION 2: METHODS OF PERSECUTION OF RELIGIOUS COMMUNITIES IN OCCUPIED UKRAINE
2.1 Religious Persecution Prior to and Following the Full-Scale Invasion The pattern of religious persecution in Russian-occupied Ukrainian territories did not begin in 2022 – it has deep roots going back to the occupation of Crimea and parts of Donetsk and Luhansk regions in 2014. Following the 2014 occupation, Evangelical Christians, Orthodox communities of the Kyiv Patriarchate, Greek Catholics, and Jehovah’s Witnesses became the primary targets of religious persecution. The leader of the self-proclaimed “DPR,” Oleksandr Zakharchenko, announced in May 2015 that the occupation authorities recognized only four religious communities: Orthodoxy of the Moscow Patriarchate, Catholicism, Islam, and Judaism. All other communities were classified as “sects” and subjected to systematic repression.
These practices have direct historical parallels with Soviet-era repression. Beginning in the late 1920s, the Bolshevik regime carried out systematic persecution of religious communities, particularly Protestant churches. During the height of Stalinist repression, tens of thousands of believers were deported to forced labor camps. In 1951, Operation “North” forcibly deported approximately 10,000 Jehovah’s Witnesses to Siberia solely because of their religious affiliation. In 1946, the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church was forcibly liquidated during the Lviv Pseudo-Council held on the direct order of Stalin and forcibly merged into the Russian Orthodox Church. Today, Russian occupiers are applying these same methods against the very same communities on Ukrainian territory.
2.2 Administrative Restrictions on Freedom of Religion after 2022 Following the full-scale occupation of eastern and southern regions of Ukraine, religious communities have been subjected to systematic administrative pressure: regular searches, document inspections, fines, psychological intimidation of clergy, disconnection of electricity to religious buildings, and blocking of financial accounts. By the summer of 2023, in the occupied territories of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions, the Russian authorities had effectively banned the activities of all religious organizations, except for parishes of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church transferred into direct subordination to the Russian Orthodox Church.
The occupation authorities insist on the re-registration of religious communities under Russian legislation, threatening to deprive them of legal status if they refuse. Re-registration is impossible without Russian citizenship being obtained by the head and founders of a religious community. Russian officials openly stated to one community leader: “If you register your community under Russian law, you will get your prayer house back”. Russian occupying forces declare closed churches to be ownerless property and confiscate them for administrative needs. Systematic looting of seized religious buildings has been documented, carried out by military personnel, officials, or local residents.
Protestant Christians are particularly affected, being systematically stigmatized as “Western spies,” “CIA agents,” “extremists,” or “sectarians” echoing the exact terminology used by Soviet security services against the same communities decades earlier. The Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church was formally banned in the territory of occupied Zaporizhzhia region as early as December 2022.
2.3 Documented Cases of Violence, Torture, and Forced Deportation of Clergy Cases of persecution, torture, and killing of clergy from Ukrainian churches in Russian-occupied territories have been extensively documented. A statement by Ukraine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs dated January 10, 2025, reports that 67 clergy members of various Ukrainian churches and religious organizations have been killed by Russian occupation authorities.
One of the most high-profile cases is the torture and killing of Orthodox priest Stepan Podolchak in the settlement of Kalanchak in occupied Kherson region. Russian occupiers broke down the door of his home, placed a hood over his head, and took him to an unknown location. Two days later, they called his wife and told her to come and identify the body. According to Bishop Borys (Kharko), Father Stepan was shot by Russian soldiers for refusing to cooperate with the occupation authorities.
In the city of Berdiansk, two priests of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church – Ivan Levytskyi and Bohdan Heleta – were arrested during a public prayer for peace. Father Bohdan, who suffers from diabetes, was held in overcrowded, damp conditions without access to medication, exposing him to life-threatening health risks. He described witnessing a young man in his cell being tortured with electric shocks and forced to memorize the Russian national anthem under threat of continued beatings.
Father Khrystofor Khrimli, a priest of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine in occupied Donetsk region, was repeatedly pressured by FSB officers to transfer his community to the Moscow Patriarchate. When he refused, stating, “I am a monk; I took an oath to the Church of Ukraine. An oath is taken once in a lifetime,” he was dragged from his home and transported to a detention facility in the Russian Federation. He and his fellow priest Father Andrii Chui face multiple charges, including the extraordinary accusation that praying in the Ukrainian language rather than Russian Church Slavonic constitutes “extremism”.
Archpriest Kostiantyn Maksymov of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church was among five priests who refused to sign an appeal requesting accession to the Russian Orthodox Church at a diocesan meeting in Berdiansk. He was detained in May 2023, subjected to more than 21 months of pre-trial detention, and sentenced to 14 years in a high-security penal colony under espionage charges. He is currently held over 1,000 kilometers from his home community, in the Saratov Region of Russia.
A UGCC priest from Melitopol, Father Petro Krenytskyi, was physically beaten by six FSB officers during a morning service, forced to his knees, and formally deported from the city by order of the Russian occupation administration of Zaporizhzhia region. At a checkpoint, a soldier shouted: “Walk on foot. I will shoot you on the way”.
CONCLUSION
The evidence presented in this testimony demonstrates a systematic, state-directed policy of religious persecution in the Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine. This policy is characterized by the imposition of canonical control by the Russian Orthodox Church over all religious life in the occupied territories; the persecution, abduction, and killing of priests, pastors, and believers; forced deportations; and the destruction and seizure of churches belonging to denominations that refuse to submit to the Moscow Patriarchate.
These actions are not spontaneous acts of violence – they are the product of a coherent ideological framework embodied in the “Russkiy Mir” doctrine, which fuses Russian Orthodox identity with Russian state power and uses religious persecution as a tool of political subjugation. The parallels with Soviet-era repression are not incidental; they reflect the deliberate continuation of a repressive tradition targeting the same communities, using the same language, and pursuing the same goals: the destruction of Ukrainian religious and national identity.
Russia’s declared claim of “protecting Christianity” is fundamentally contradicted by its systematic destruction of Christian communities, the torture and killing of Christian clergy, and the weaponization of religious institutions against the very people they are meant to serve. What is happening in occupied Ukraine is not the protection of faith it is its violent elimination, wherever it cannot be subordinated to Moscow.
I respectfully urge the U.S. government to:
- Increase diplomatic pressure on the Russian Federation to immediately end religious repression in the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine;
- Support and strengthen independent monitoring mechanisms documenting violations of the right to freedom of religion in occupied Ukrainian territories;
- Facilitate the imposition of targeted sanctions against individuals and entities – including senior leadership of the Russian Orthodox Church – who are directly involved in the persecution of religious communities in occupied Ukraine;
- Advocate for the release of clergy and believers who have been illegally detained, including Archpriest Kostiantyn Maksymov and Fathers Khrystofor Khrimli and Andrii Chui;
- Recognize the systematic use of the Russian Orthodox Church by the Russian state as an instrument of war crimes and crimes against humanity, including the forcible transfer of Ukrainian children.
I am grateful for this opportunity to present these facts under oath and remain committed to continued cooperation with all bodies working to protect religious freedom and human rights.
Respectfully submitted, Vladyslav Havrylov Global Fellow, Collaborative on Global Children’s Issues, Georgetown University Research Consultant, Leverhulme Centre for Research on Slavery in War, King’s College London, Head of the Section for Research and Analytical Work, International Advocacy, and the Establishment of International Religious Relations of the Religious Brotherhood of the Blessed Hetman Petro Konashevych-Sahaidachny of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine. Kyiv, Ukraine, 2026.