Christians Should Be Harder to Fool About Ukraine

July 21, 2026

Ukraine is not distant to me.

I have been to Russia and Ukraine numerous times. Three of my siblings were adopted from Ukraine. I remember standing in old Communist meeting halls during the earliest years of Ukrainian independence, watching my father preach the Gospel in towns near Chernihiv and Chernobyl.

The crowds responded so overwhelmingly that my father deliberately began preaching the hard passages.

“Foxes have holes and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head.”

He did not offer them an easy faith. He warned them that following Jesus could cost them everything.

Town after town, people told us that they had waited their entire lives to hear the truth about the Creator and His Son. They wanted to follow Him, whatever the cost.

Years later, I returned and found churches full of sincere believers, still loving the Word and still following Christ.

For me, Ukraine is not an abstraction.

It is people I know. It is churches in which I have worshiped. It is farms, cities and families. It is a vast and beautiful country whose economy has been wounded by corruption and foreign manipulation, but whose people have demonstrated extraordinary grit, resilience and ingenuity in refusing to become merely a pawn of either Russia or the United States.

And now I repeatedly hear American Christians say:

Ukraine is corrupt.

Ukraine is Nazi.

Zelensky is a Jewish comedian who hates Christians.

Ukraine is arresting pastors.

Russia is defending Christianity.

Russia had no choice but to invade because it could not permit NATO on its border.

Some of those claims contain fragments of truth.

Taken together, they produce a profound lie.

Let us test them one at a time.

Yes, Ukraine has had a serious corruption problem

I am not fluent in Russian or Ukrainian, but I have spent enough time in both countries to understand that Ukrainian politics has long involved pressure, money and influence from both Russia and the West.

Ukraine is a relatively poor country situated between much wealthier and more powerful blocs. Its politicians have repeatedly been offered greater rewards by outside powers than they could plausibly earn through honest public service at home.

Ukraine’s corruption problems are real. When someone tells me that a Ukrainian politician has taken foreign money or served foreign interests, I do not dismiss the claim automatically.

That is one reason I once had particular hope for Vitali Klitschko, the former heavyweight champion and current mayor of Kyiv. He entered politics already wealthy, internationally famous and academically accomplished. He appeared less likely than the ordinary politician to need a foreign patron.

But corruption may explain why governments fail.

It never explains why neighbors invade.

No, Ukraine is not a Nazi state

Ukraine contains extremists, as nearly every European country does. The Azov movement has included people with neo-Nazi and ultranationalist backgrounds. That is true, and it should not be concealed.

But the existence of extremists does not make Ukraine a Nazi state.

Ukraine elected a Jewish president. Far-right parties have performed poorly in national elections. Ukrainian Jews serve throughout the country’s public life and armed forces.

The accusation is particularly grotesque given Ukraine’s history.

Stalin’s policies contributed to the Holodomor, in which millions of Ukrainians starved. Nazi occupation then brought mass murder, forced labor and destruction. Ukrainians have historical reasons to despise both Nazi tyranny and Russian imperial domination.

It is bizarre to hear Americans portray a Jewish-led country as Nazi while excusing a Russian state openly engaged in imperial conquest.

No, Zelensky does not hate Christians

Volodymyr Zelensky was a successful entertainer before becoming president. He is also Jewish.

Neither fact establishes hostility toward Christianity.

But to understand what Ukraine actually did to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, you have to understand what the Russian Orthodox Church actually is.

Patriarch Kirill does not stand above the Kremlin as an independent moral authority. He has closely aligned the Russian Orthodox Church with Putin’s government and given theological legitimacy to its war. The World Council of Churches itself condemned a Russian church declaration describing the conflict as a holy war.

A church that blesses conquest has ceased to be the conscience of the state and has become one of its ministries.

In June, during one of Russia’s largest missile and drone attacks on Kyiv, the Dormition Cathedral at the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra caught fire.

This is an eleventh century monastery and one of the most sacred sites in all of Orthodoxy.

Ukrainian investigators reported finding debris from a Russian-designed Geran-2 attack drone at the site, including components connected to Russia’s Alabuga production facility. Russia denied responsibility and blamed a Ukrainian air defense missile.

Zelensky called the attack one of Russia’s gravest crimes against Christian culture.

But the Russian church hierarchy that has blessed Putin’s war offered no comparable public cry of protest.

That is the context in which Ukraine’s actions against the Moscow-linked church must be understood.

Ukraine has investigated, sanctioned and prosecuted clergy associated with the Ukrainian Orthodox Church historically affiliated with the Moscow Patriarchate. Individual clergy have been accused of spreading Russian propaganda, aiding intelligence operations and collaborating with occupation forces.

But Ukraine’s 2024 law went further than prosecuting individual collaborators. It prohibited the Russian Orthodox Church from operating in Ukraine and created a process through which Ukrainian religious organizations found to remain affiliated with it could ultimately be dissolved by court order.

Although the Ukrainian Orthodox Church is not named in the law, it is plainly the religious body most affected.

The UN, Pope Francis, Human Rights Watch and other Christian organizations raised legitimate concerns about the law’s breadth and its implications for religious liberty.

Those concerns should not be dismissed.

But neither should the law be falsely described as Zelensky rounding up pastors because they preach Christ.

Consider what happened at the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra.

The monastery had long been used by the Ukrainian Orthodox Church historically associated with Moscow. At the end of 2022, the government allowed that church’s leases on the Dormition Cathedral and the Refectory Church to expire. In January 2023, the state permitted the independent Orthodox Church of Ukraine to begin conducting services there. Disputes over the remaining buildings and monks continued.

Ukraine did not abolish Orthodox worship at the Lavra.

It transferred important national religious sites away from a hierarchy historically subordinate to Moscow and toward a Ukrainian led Orthodox church recognized as independent by the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople.

The churches remained open.

The liturgy continued.

The worshipers still prayed.

What changed was which hierarchy controlled the buildings.

That is not the same thing as imprisoning pastors because they preach Christ.

No, Russia is not the protector of Christianity

This is the claim American Christians should find easiest to test.

For decades, Ukraine has been one of the freest and most fruitful places in the former Soviet world for Baptists, Pentecostals, independent evangelicals, missionaries, seminaries and Christian humanitarian ministries.

My missionary and evangelical pastor friends have experienced that freedom firsthand.

Russia offers a very different model.

The Russian state privileges a tightly controlled religious system centered on the Russian Orthodox Church. Independent and minority religious groups face registration requirements, restrictions on missionary work, surveillance, fines, prosecution and other forms of pressure.

The contrast becomes unmistakable in Russian occupied Ukraine.

There, Protestant and evangelical congregations have faced closures, seizures, intimidation, detention, torture and violence. Russian authorities frequently associate independent evangelical Christianity with American or Western influence.

Russia does not simply persecute political opponents who happen to be Christians.

It has specifically targeted Christian communities because they refuse to submit to the

Russian religious and political system.

In Ukraine, evangelicals have generally enjoyed greater freedom, influence and public recognition than they have under Russian rule.

It is not particularly close.

No, NATO did not force Russia’s hand

Russia already bordered NATO long before it invaded Ukraine.

Norway was a founding NATO member. Poland and Lithuania bordered Russia’s Kaliningrad territory. Estonia and Latvia joined NATO in 2004.

Anyone claiming that Russia simply could not tolerate a NATO country on its border should first locate Kaliningrad on a map.

Ukraine’s NATO membership was not imminent in February 2022.

Ukraine had no invitation.

It had no accession date.

And NATO’s members had not agreed to admit it.

Putin invaded while Ukraine remained outside the alliance and without NATO’s collective defense protection.

The invasion then produced precisely the result Russia claimed to fear.

Finland abandoned military nonalignment and joined NATO, adding an enormous new direct border between NATO and Russia.

Russian leaders certainly had strategic concerns about NATO. Great powers care about neighboring alliances.

But a strategic concern is not a moral license to conquer another country.

Christians are called to love truth more than tribes

Russia is not uniquely evil, and Ukraine is not uniquely pure.

Ukraine has corruption. It has political factionalism. It has made serious mistakes. Its wartime religious policies should remain subject to legal and moral scrutiny.

But Christians should be able to distinguish imperfection from propaganda.

Ukraine is not a Nazi state.

Zelensky is not imprisoning Christians because he hates Christ.

Russia is not the protector of evangelical Christianity.

And NATO did not suddenly arrive on Russia’s border in 2022.

Christians are commanded to test every spirit.

We should test governments.

We should test media.

We should test our favorite commentators.

We should especially test the stories we most want to believe.

Truth is never served by repeating propaganda simply because it comes from our side.

I remember Ukrainians standing in former Communist halls and saying they had waited their entire lives to hear the truth about Jesus.

Decades later, I hear American Christians describe those same people as enemies of Christianity while defending the government bombing their cities.

Pray for Ukraine.

Pray for Russia.

Pray for peace.

And pray that Christians would love truth enough to repent when we have repeated falsehoods.

Clayton S. Wood From Confusion to Clarity