Russian Bombs Slam Ukraine’s Most Catholic City

At dawn on October 5, Russian fighter jets launched a wave of Kinzhal aeroballistic missiles toward western Ukraine. Explosions shook Lviv, the country’s most Catholic city, as more than a hundred drones and missiles struck targets from Kyiv to the Polish border.

The BBC reported that among the victims were four members of one family, including a 15-year-old girl, killed when a missile struck their home in the village of Lapaivka, near Lviv. President Volodymyr Zelensky condemned the attack as another act of “aerial terror,” urging Ukraine’s allies to accelerate deliveries of air defense systems.

Following the strike, Sergey Radchenko, a professor at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies, wrote on X: “The message to Ukraine is clear: ‘Submit to the Czar, or this will continue indefinitely.’”

A Symbolic Strike on Ukraine’s Catholic Heart

According to Benjamin Maracek, a social studies teacher and volunteer English instructor at Balakun, these rotational strikes are part of Russia’s evolving campaign to cripple Ukraine’s defense industry. “These rotational strikes are Russia’s attempts to hit regional energy infrastructure and what they believe are Ukraine’s defense production or storage centers,” says Maracek. “They hit Sparrow Industrial Park for the same reason they hit Retro Mall in Kyiv or Epicenter in Kharkiv – huge warehouses that could conceivably be UAV production or storage facilities.”

Maracek emphasized that the choice of Lviv is not only strategic but symbolic. He said U.S. politicians such as Vice President JD Vance, a Catholic, should pay attention to the plight of Lviv, Ukraine’s most Catholic city. Vance converted to Catholicism in 2019 and was baptized at Cincinnati’s St. Gertrude Priory by a Dominican friar; he has credited Dominican priests with helping guide his faith journey.

“The Dominican order first arrived in Lviv in the 13th century and had a strong presence until Stalin’s persecution after World War II. The KGB-led Moscow Patriarchate still views the Greek Catholic Church as Western influence – it’s the same mindset that led Stalin to abolish the Church at the Lviv Sobor in 1946,” Maracek said.

Alexander Motyl, a political science professor at Rutgers University, notes that Lviv’s identity has long embodied defiance to Russian domination. “Lviv is also a symbol of Ukrainian nationalism, resistance, and ultimately of Bandera,” Motyl said. “Russia first banned the Uniate Church in the 1830s or 1840s, and then again in 1948 or 1949. The Uniates were beholden to the Pope, not Russia, and were closely associated with Ukrainian nationalism.”

For journalist JP Lindsay, Russia’s recent attack carries an even deeper message. “Such a massive strike on Lviv, just 40 miles from Poland and NATO, is a clear signal to Europe from Russia: ‘This could easily be you,’” says Lindsay. “While trying to cripple Lviv as a supply hub, Russia hopes to scare European nations into keeping weapons for themselves rather than arming Ukraine.”

Lviv, often described as Ukraine’s cultural soul, is also its most actively religious city, where, as Lindsay noted, “on a Sunday morning, even during an air raid, churches are packed, and priests chant the creed in Latin as the walls shake.” He continued, “This is what the media have missed – Lviv is not Orthodox, but Greek Catholic, in union with the Pope but eastern in ritual. Every virtue conservatives say the West has lost – faith, family, community – thrives here.”

Maracek added that Russia’s hostility toward Ukraine’s diverse Christian communities reveals a broader pattern of repression. “Like the torture and execution of Christians in occupied territories, attacks like these demonstrate the intolerance of the Russian state,” he said. “Since 2014, Ukrainian Protestants have also been targeted – churches destroyed, pastors arrested, entire congregations driven underground. Faith is dead in Russia; churches are empty. But in western Ukraine, they are full.”

Lindsay argued that these attacks are part of Russia’s broader psychological warfare against Europe. “Russia is terrified of the prospect of American support for Ukraine, so it’s working to frighten Europeans into submission,” he said. “The closer Ukraine gets to victory, the nastier Russia will lash out, targeting its most beautiful, holy, and free cities like Lviv.”

He added that Western observers have failed to grasp the cultural stakes. “Even if you don’t want to arm Ukraine’s Christians, at least realize they are everything you want the West to be.”

Moscow’s War Against Ukraine’s Christians

Yet the Kremlin’s war on faith stretches far beyond Catholicism. Since Russia’s first invasion in 2014, Ukrainian Protestants have been among the earliest victims of repression. “Like the torture and execution of Christians in occupied territories, attacks like these demonstrate the intolerance of the Russian state,” said Maracek. These acts of repression are not random.

“Russia’s attacks on religious minorities have been a common tactic used by the Russian government to consolidate centralized control over religious groups,” says Eddie Priymak, an analyst who focuses on religion in Ukraine. Those deemed difficult to control are targeted and neutralized – either by shutting down their churches or forcing submission to Russian authorities.”

The Kremlin’s religious war has deep roots. During World War II, Joseph Stalin revived the Russian Orthodox Church not as an act of faith but as a tool of control, a domesticated arm of the secret police meant to legitimize Soviet authority. According to Maracek, what began as a KGB-managed institution has evolved under Vladimir Putin into a pillar of state ideology. Today, the Moscow Patriarchate operates less as a church than as a political agency, advancing the Kremlin’s agenda and denouncing Catholics, Protestants, and independent Orthodox believers as threats to national unity. Its zeal to eliminate dissenting faiths mirrors the same absolutism found in extremist movements that seek to purge all rivals to their creed.

The human toll of Russia’s attacks on Lviv has been devastating. In September 2024, a similar Russian strike killed Daria Bazylevych, a student at the Ukrainian Catholic University, along with her mother and two sisters. Daria had written that her first year at university was “an awakening for everyone because of the war. With the war came consciousness, an understanding of what was really happening, and values and principles changed. But most importantly, I realized how important it is to know the history of your country.”

Her words now serve as a haunting reminder of what Russia’s missiles aim to destroy – not just lives and buildings, but the intellectual and moral foundations of Ukraine’s next generation.

According to The Wall Street Journal, Russia has sought to “erase Evangelical churches from occupied Ukraine.” The Russian Orthodox Church, re-established by Joseph Stalin in 1943 as a tool of state control, remains deeply entwined with the FSB, serving as both a spiritual and political arm of the Kremlin.

From 1946 to 1989, the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church was forced underground by Soviet authorities, and its leader, Josyf Slipyi, spent 18 years in prison before being deported in 1963. Under Vladimir Putin, this alliance has only deepened, with the Church providing moral cover for the invasion while denouncing non-Orthodox Christians as agents of Western influence.

Since the full-scale invasion in 2022, this campaign has accelerated. Research from the Center for Strategic and International Studies found that Russian forces have damaged or destroyed at least 660 churches and other religious structures, including 206 Protestant ones. In Luhansk Oblast under Russian occupation, not a single Protestant church remains open for worship. In Zaporizhzhia Oblast, all Greek Catholic churches have been banned. Evangelical pastors have been abducted, tortured, or killed, while hundreds of congregations have been forced underground.

A False Narrative in the West

Tucker Carlson has repeatedly pushed the false claim that Ukraine persecutes Christians – a talking point amplified by Russian state media to justify its invasion. The reality is the opposite. Russia is waging war on Ukraine’s Christian communities. Its forces have bombed churches, executed Protestant pastors, and outlawed the Greek Catholic Church in occupied regions.

A 2025 report by Mission Eurasia documented at least 47 Ukrainian Christian leaders of different denominations killed as a result of Russia’s full-scale aggression from 2022 to 2024. The report detailed torture by Russian troops, imprisonment in inhumane conditions, and targeted shootings of clergy and civilians. The report added that Evangelical Christians are subjected to threats, surveillance, defamation and “brutal violence.” By portraying Ukraine as hostile to Christianity, Carlson and others echo Kremlin propaganda, spreading lies aimed at eroding Western support for Kyiv.

A new documentary, A Faith Under Siege, reveals how Russia’s invasion has become a war on faith itself. The film documents how, in occupied regions, evangelical Christians face torture, imprisonment, and the destruction of their churches. Co-producer Colby Barrett, a former U.S. Marine, said Russian forces have “shelled, looted, or destroyed more than 650 churches.”

In some areas, occupation authorities have forced congregations to register with Russian officials, turning prayer gatherings into acts of quiet defiance. Despite the risk, believers continue to meet in basements and private homes to worship. “They have not given up their faith,” said Steven Moore, founder of the Ukraine Freedom Project and the film’s co-producer. “The Russians have not been able to stamp it out.”

Ukrainian American Mikhail Pavenko, originally from Donetsk Oblast and a volunteer Protestant chaplain in Ukraine since 2015, told me the country’s Protestant churches have become “a ray of hope and light” amid the devastation. Members of Pavenko’s family were among the first to be killed by pro-Russian militias in Sloviansk in 2014 for their religious beliefs.

Pavenko frequently travels to Washington, D.C., to advocate for Ukraine and its Christian community. “Sadly, Russian propaganda has been effective at shaping the narrative within the GOP,” he said, “but even that is starting to change for the better. Advocacy must go on. Losing Ukraine to Russia would do no good for the West, and I think American politicians understand that.”

Maracek pointed out that “the KGB-led Moscow Patriarchate has always hated the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church because it sees it as Western influence.” He noted that in 1946, Stalin’s regime staged the infamous Lviv Sobor, formally abolishing the Greek Catholic Church and forcing its followers into the Russian Orthodox fold. “What’s happening now is a continuation of that same project, an attempt to erase every independent form of Christianity that can’t be controlled by the state.”

Polling underscores how little of this is understood in the United States. A GOP Primary Voter Survey conducted in April 2024 found that 66% of Republican voters knew “little to nothing” about Russia’s torture and murder of Ukrainian Christians in occupied regions. Lindsay believes that ignorance has consequences. “Even if you don’t want to arm Ukraine’s Christians, at least realize they are everything you want the West to be. Faith is alive here – it’s what keeps this nation standing.”

From the bombing of Lviv’s Dominican cathedral district to the destruction of Evangelical meeting houses across the occupied territories, Moscow’s message is clear – any expression of faith outside state control is an enemy.

As the bells of St. George’s Cathedral rang through the smoke on Sunday morning, locals once again gathered for Mass. “This is the culture Russia seeks to destroy,” Lindsay said. “Ukrainians are willing to fight for freedom because they believe in Western civilization, because they are Western civilization.”

For Vladimir Putin, the very existence of a free Ukraine threatens his rule. Its defiant Protestants and Greek Catholics have long been a sore point for Russia, which has sought to erase independent faith communities that stand beyond the reach of the state. The current campaign is only the latest chapter in that history of destruction.