Religion in the Crossfire between Russia and Ukraine

Ukraine’s Parliament, the Verkhovna Rada, recently passed a controversial law that seeks to thwart the Kremlin-backed Russian Orthodox Church’s influence in Ukraine. This comes in response to accusations that some clergy of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate) support the Russian Armed Forces through means like trafficking weapons and disseminating propaganda.

Is the new law a legitimate response to the weaponization of religion by an enemy nation during wartime? Or is it a violation of religious freedom?

Oleksandr Aliksiichuk, member of the Verkhovna Rada and coauthor of the legislation; Dr. Maksym Vasin, executive director of the Ukraine-based Institute for Religious Freedom; and Lauren Homer, an international human rights lawyer and the president of Law and Liberty Trust, will join Hudson to discuss this question. 

Then a second panel of experts and witnesses will discuss the Russian Armed Forces’ religious atrocities in Ukraine, including deliberate attacks against churches and evangelical Christians. This panel will feature Ukrainian minister and former Verkhovna Rada Member Pavlo Unguryan; Dmitry Bodyu, founder and pastor of the Word of Life Church in Melitopol and a victim of torture by the Russian Armed Forces; and Dr. Katharyn Hanson, the head of research at the Smithsonian’s Cultural Rescue Initiative (SCRI) and an expert on Russia’s destruction of Ukraine’s cultural heritage sites.

Nina Shea, director of Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom, will moderate the event.