[PRESS RELEASE]
Eden Gordon Media | April 8, 2025
(WASHINGTON, D.C.) — “A Faith Under Siege: Russia’s Hidden War on Ukraine’s Christians” dives into the harrowing reality facing Ukraine’s Christian communities under Russian occupation. Executive Producers Steven Moore and Colby Barrett traveled the entire length of the Ukrainian front lines to document stories from Evangelical and Protestant believers who are being singled out for persecution. Churches are destroyed or seized, pastors tortured or killed and families torn apart through forced “conversions” or abductions, all to erase dissenting faiths. These abductions were highlighted by Moore and Barrett in a recent opinion piece for The Christian Post, “Why is nobody talking about the nearly 20,000 abducted Ukrainian children?”
“Russia has abducted more than 19,546 Ukrainian children during its invasion of Ukraine. Some of those children have been forcibly adopted into Russia; others languish in a series of 43 camps spread across Russia and Russian-occupied territory. The majority of those camps are focused on ‘re-education,’ military training, or both,” they write for The Christian Post.
“For us, these stories aren’t abstractions. In the course of shooting our upcoming documentary ‘A Faith Under Siege: Russia’s Hidden War on Ukraine’s Christians,’ we’ve met these survivors and victims in person. We interviewed Rostyslav, a Ukrainian orphan boy that escaped from a Russian military camp, where he was kept in solitary confinement. We also met Nadiia, a mother who had a gun held to her head in front of her children while members of the Russian Guard tortured her husband in the next room. With a tip-off from her pastor, the family escaped from Russian-occupied Ukraine just days before her oldest child was set to be taken from them and sent to one of these Russian-controlled indoctrination facilities. Her story is here,” they continue.
“According to Mykola Kubela, founder of Save Ukraine, an organization that has now rescued 612 children from the Russians, Russia is abducting Ukrainian children for two reasons. First, to destroy the Ukrainian identity of an entire generation, and, second, to turn these children into ‘patriotic Russians.’ In doing so, Russia gains more cannon fodder for its current war against Ukraine, as well as future wars against the West. With Russia losing sometimes 2,000 soldiers per day, the motivation to create future troops makes sense. The U.S. State Department’s ‘Trafficking in Persons’ report notes that Ukrainian boys are used for conscription, as well as ‘forced labor … including in forced criminality for drug trafficking and as couriers.’ Ukrainian girls, meanwhile, are subject to ‘forced labor, forced conscription, and sexual exploitation in Russia-occupied areas, often via kidnapping, torture, and extortion,’” Moore and Barrett write.
“There is another strategic motivation to explain Putin’s hunger for abducted children: Russia’s acute demographic crisis. Russia’s birth rate has been declining for nearly 25 years, and Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has drastically exacerbated an overall ‘crisis of hopelessness.’ In 2023, of the 1.8 million babies conceived in Russia, only 1.2 million were born, while over 460,000 were aborted. Falling birth rates and high abortion rates mean that Russia’s population could fall by 50% by 2100 – which happens to be the same century that the ‘World Russian People’s Council’ (a joint venture of the Russian state and the Russian Orthodox Church) has called for a Russian population of 600 million,” they continued.
READ MORE about the hidden war against Christians in Ukraine at The Christian Post.
About: A Faith Under Siege
“A Faith Under Siege: Russia’s Hidden War on Ukraine’s Children” dives into the harrowing reality facing Ukraine’s Christian communities under Russian occupation. As Russia seeks to absorb Ukraine’s population to restore its former empire status, Evangelical and Protestant believers are singled out for persecution. Churches are destroyed or seized, pastors tortured or killed, and families torn apart through forced “conversions” or abductions, all to erase dissenting faiths. Yet even amid these horrors, a steadfast unity emerges. Christians across denominations stand shoulder to shoulder, aided by international allies who refuse to let their plight go unseen.
About: Steven Moore
Steven Moore is a former chief of staff in the U.S. House of Representatives who came to Ukraine on day five of the war and lives there now. He has testified in front of Congress about Russia’s torture and murder of Ukraine’s Christians. With more than 100 media appearances, Steven is a strong voice for Christians in Ukraine being oppressed by Vladimir Putin. His work has drawn Russia’s attention, as the Kremlin has placed him on its hit list of foreign combatants.|
About: Colby Barrett
Colby Barrett, JD, PE, is an entrepreneur, filmmaker, and former U.S. Marine Corps Captain who led infantry and scout/sniper platoons in the Pacific Rim and Middle East. His faith brought him to Ukraine in the fall of 2024 where he led a documentary film team on a 1500 mile journey around the Ukrainian front, interviewing dozens of Christians who suffered under Russian occupation His film, A Faith Under Siege, premieres later this month.
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