NEW YORK — More than four years into Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Orthodox Christians in the United States are voicing sharply competing claims about religious freedom in the war-torn country.

Last month, St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church and National Shrine in New York City — rebuilt beside the ruins of the World Trade Center after its original parish was destroyed on September 11, 2001 — presented Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky with its 2026 Beacon of Hope Award, according to Christianity Today.

Greek Orthodox lay leader George Gigicos said the shrine chose to honor the resilience of the Ukrainian people and Zelensky. "St. Nicholas itself was destroyed through an act of terror, and looking at who we should honor, we look at people that … go through the same things that we went through," Gigicos said, calling the shrine "a symbol of light over darkness and good over evil."

Not all Orthodox Christians agreed. Three days before the September ceremony, Orthodox Reflections, a U.S.-focused Orthodox commentary and advocacy website, urged Orthodox communities to protest outside the event, claiming the Ukrainian Orthodox Church is "being severely persecuted by its own government led by Zelensky." Its website leveled serious charges — seized churches, beaten believers, bogus criminal charges, priests forcibly mobilized into the army, murdered monks. These are allegations; they are not established findings.

At the center of the dispute is a 2024 law passed by Ukraine's parliament that creates a legal path to closing religious organizations affiliated with the Russian Orthodox Church. Kyiv's position is that the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate (UOC-MP) has been an instrument of Russia's war machine. Ukrainian officials say more than 200 criminal proceedings have been launched against UOC-MP leaders since 2022, and at least 40 clergy members have been convicted of crimes ranging from treason to spreading Russian propaganda justifying the war — though some of the convictions were for crimes unrelated to the war.

In one case reported by Ukrainian media and cited by Christianity Today, a UOC-MP archpriest was convicted of treason in 2023 and sentenced to 15 years after investigators found evidence he had shared photos and locations of Ukrainian soldiers with a handler from Russia's Federal Security Service, along with the names of community members who opposed the Kremlin's war.

Human rights observers are divided. Forum 18, a Norway-based religious-freedom watchdog, concluded the 2024 law "does not comply with international standards of freedom of religion or belief," because a church's affiliation with the Russian Orthodox Church can be sufficient grounds to revoke its legal status, without proof that any particular parish or person broke the law. International human rights lawyer Lauren Homer disagrees, arguing that national security is a recognized exception: "The whole ideology coming from the Moscow Patriarchate is to destroy Ukraine, destroy its government, and eliminate it from the family of nations."

The context matters. Patriarch Kirill, head of the Russian Orthodox Church, has vocally supported the war, has said Russian soldiers who die in battle will have their sins absolved, and his church has defrocked or suspended dozens of Russian priests who opposed the invasion. "When Kirill is blessing the bombs and blessing the soldiers," Gigicos said, "what is he doing?"

Other allegations against Kyiv have been made without evidence. Robert Amsterdam, an American-Canadian attorney for the UOC-MP, amplified claims that Kyiv has tortured priests without providing evidence, according to the report, and attempted to link the August murder of a monk to a hostile environment around the church. The Washington Post reported that Amsterdam's claims mirror a propaganda campaign outlined in internal Kremlin documents from 2023 calling for "portraying Ukraine as … 'an anti-Christian society,'" and that part of his work has been financed by Vadim Novinsky, a billionaire with ties to Moscow.

Viktor Yelensky, head of Ukraine's State Service for Ethnopolitics and Freedom of Conscience, told Christianity Today that the majority of clerics connected to the UOC-MP are loyal citizens and that only a small percentage have collaborated with Russian occupiers. Under the law, he said, parishes found to have Moscow ties are given notice and at least 30 days to sever those links. "We need more solidarity and empathy from American evangelicals," Yelensky said. "American Christians need to know that Ukraine is a great Christian nation and the Bible Belt of Europe."

Meanwhile, Ukraine's religious landscape is shifting on its own. Only 3 to 4 percent of Ukrainians now identify with the Moscow-linked church — down from 15 percent six years ago — while about half identify with the independent Orthodox Church of Ukraine, according to a 2025 Kyiv International Institute of Sociology survey. Since 2019, nearly 1,750 of the UOC-MP's 11,568 parishes have transferred to the independent church.

Back at St. Nicholas, more than 450 people attended the September ceremony. Zelensky canceled his appearance but sent a seven-minute video address. Gigicos said he saw only five protesters outside — all carrying Russian flags. He added that Russia, not Ukraine, is responsible for most of the destroyed churches in the war, a point also made by Olena Kovalska, deputy head of the Office of the President of Ukraine.

When claims and counterclaims collide in wartime, God's people are called to be truth-seekers, not rumor-spreaders — and to pray for leaders and lift up believers caught in the middle.