Russian authorities in the occupied regions of eastern Ukraine are disrupting worship services of religious organizations that have not undergone the procedure of Russian state registration.

This is reported by Evangelical Focus.

According to the outlet, worship services at two prayer houses belonging to the Council of Evangelical Christian Baptists in Luhansk Oblast were recently interrupted by Russian military personnel and police. Some representatives of the security forces entered the churches carrying weapons.

“They entered the prayer hall roughly and ordered all the men to stand up,” said Pastor Volodymyr Rytykov of one of the churches in Krasnodon.

Russian security officers recorded the identities of those present at the prayer meeting. Police accused members of the evangelical communities of holding an “illegal gathering,” citing the absence of registration of the communities with the Russian occupation authorities as a pretext.

The pastor was then interrogated at a police station. “They said that if we do not register, they will come to every worship service and disrupt it,” Rytykov explained.

Earlier, between July and December 2025, Russian security forces carried out at least six raids on Ukrainian Evangelical Christian Baptist communities.

In addition, over the past six months there have been reports of a raid on a Pentecostal evangelical church and another on a Muslim community. In six out of eight cases, religious leaders were fined for “missionary activity,” which is prohibited by the occupation regime.

Among other Russian agencies, the raids involved the police Center for Combating Extremism, the prosecutor’s office, and the FSB of the Russian Federation.

Communities of the Council of Evangelical Christian Baptists, due to their religious convictions, do not undergo state registration in any country where they exist and refuse to notify authorities of their activities. For this reason, Russian authorities operating in the temporarily occupied territory of Ukraine consider their religious activity illegal and do not allow them to exercise freedom of religion. In Ukraine itself, as well as in other European countries, communities of the Council of Evangelical Christian Baptists carry out their religious activities without obstruction.