Putin: Savior of the Faith? Only in His Own Propaganda.

By Steve Richards

The other day, an Evangelical leader in the Southwest said something that stopped me cold.

I’d heard it before—but it still made my stomach turn. He claimed Vladimir Putin was somehow a defender of Christianity, a champion of “traditional values” standing up to a godless Ukraine and its supposedly secular president, Volodymyr Zelensky. The idea would be laughable if it weren’t so dangerous.

It’s easy to see why some find that claim seductive. In an age of moral drift, many believers crave firm spiritual leadership and a culture that still honors faith. But this narrative—crafted and amplified for years by Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill—is not a defense of Christianity; it’s a weaponized lie. It hijacks the language of faith to mask imperial ambition and seduce well-meaning Christians in the West—all while Russian forces kill Protestant pastors, level churches, and fill churchyards with mass graves, as in Bucha.

The truth is, Ukraine has been a cornerstone of Christianity for over a millennium. It embraced the faith in 988 AD under Prince Volodymyr—when Moscow was still a swamp. Across Ukraine, church domes crown every skyline; shrines and crosses stand proudly in public squares. Schools welcome prayer. Faith shapes daily life. From Lviv to Kharkiv, the church isn’t a relic of the past—it’s the living heart of the nation.

Russia’s record on religion tells a darker truth. After 1917, Lenin and Stalin waged open war on faith itself. “Militant atheism” became state doctrine. The so-called League of the Militant Godless spread its gospel of disbelief through schools and propaganda, hunting down believers of every kind—Orthodox, Catholic, Protestant, Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist. Churches, mosques, synagogues—boarded up or destroyed. Priests and pastors hauled off, shot, or left to freeze in the gulag. By the late 1930s, faith in Russia survived only underground, whispered in fear.

When Nazi Germany invaded in 1941, Stalin suddenly discovered his “faith.” Not out of belief—out of desperation. He resurrected the Russian Orthodox Church, not to worship God, but to weaponize Him—turning priests into mouthpieces for the state under the iron grip of the NKVD, later the KGB. Other faiths remained crushed beneath the boot. In 1946, he outlawed the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, jailing its priests and forcing its flock into Moscow’s fold. Protestants and Jews were surveilled, harassed, and driven underground. Stalin didn’t spare Orthodoxy; he enslaved it—using a hollowed-out religion as camouflage for tyranny while extinguishing real spiritual life across the Soviet empire.

For forty years, the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church survived only by miracle. Its clergy met in cellars, kitchens, and forest clearings—whispering the liturgy, baptizing in secret, burying their dead by night. Faith became an act of resistance. Only in the late 1980s, under glasnost and perestroika—and with the bold encouragement of Pope John Paul II—did the Church rise again, a resurrection after four decades in the catacombs. Protestants, too, endured in the shadows. In Kyiv and beyond, pastors still speak of grandfathers who were jailed, beaten, or vanished simply for preaching the gospel.

Since independence in 1991, religious freedom in Ukraine has flourished. I’ve interviewed Pentecostal, Charismatic, Presbyterian, Catholic, Evangelical, Baptist, and even Orthodox pastors across the country—none feel persecuted. They laugh at the notion; it’s pure Russian disinformation.

Meanwhile, Putin and Patriarch Kirill parade as defenders of Christianity—but only their own, state-approved brand of it: a weaponized Russian Orthodoxy chained to the Kremlin. Every other expression of faith is treated as a threat. Protestant and Evangelical churches are smeared as “sects” or “cults.” Even Ukraine’s own Orthodox Church is punished simply for breaking free from Moscow’s grip. In Putin’s empire, faith isn’t sacred—it’s scripted.

The bottom line couldn’t be clearer: Ukraine lives religious freedom. Orthodox, Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Muslim—all free, all respected, all thriving side by side. It’s not propaganda; it’s reality. And it’s one of the very freedoms Ukrainians are bleeding to defend. Even priests of the Russian Orthodox Church are free to hold mass in Ukraine so long as they don’t engage in espionage or act as tools of Russian propaganda.

Good luck finding that in Russia—or anywhere under its boot. That’s not propaganda. It’s witness—the living faith of people who refuse to bow, even as bombs fall and churches burn.