The Chairman of the Helsinki Commission, Republican Congressman Joe Wilson, and several other lawmakers have introduced a bipartisan legislative initiative aimed at countering Russian attacks on religious freedom.
The bill, which has been filed in the Senate, requires the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defence to jointly report on Russia’s actions to persecute, suppress and violate the religious freedoms of religious communities in Ukraine and Russian-occupied territories. It also directs the president to impose sanctions against foreign individuals found to be involved in these actions.
“Russia persecutes and kills believers as part of its policy wherever it invades. The war criminal Putin seeks to prevent the free exercise of religion by all believers and suppresses any religion that does not submit to its state church and corrupt former KGB agent Patriarch Kirill, or otherwise defy repressive state control,” said the congressman, head of the Helsinki Commission.
Wilson noted that believers in the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine are subjected to “particular cruelty,” so it is crucial to oppose Russia’s war on faith.
Republican U.S. House of Representatives member Brian Fitzpatrick, who is a co-sponsor of the bill, said Russia’s war in Ukraine is not only an attack on sovereignty, it is “a deliberate, systemic assault on religious freedom.”
“For Americans, freedom of religion-one of our most fundamental freedoms-and we do not stand by when it is suppressed by force. This legislation ensures that these crimes will be documented, the perpetrators will be identified, and there will be real consequences,” Fitzpatrick said.
Russian occupation authorities in captured parts of Ukraine have launched a massive crackdown on churches and religious organisations, leading to a rapid rollback of religious freedom in non-Ukrainian-controlled territories, Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry said earlier.
The UN monitoring mission on human rights in Ukraine said in its report released in February 2026 that Russian authorities had restricted freedom of religion or belief, freedom of expression and opinion, and freedom of peaceful assembly.
The report noted that members of religious groups who were perceived to oppose Russia and its armed attack on Ukraine were harassed, detained, sentenced to imprisonment or deported. Members of Jehovah’s Witnesses and Hizb ut-Tahrir, an organisation banned in the Russian Federation but legal in Ukraine, were particularly targeted.