Colby Barrett was at his home in Telluride, Colorado, last year when a friend called with an invitation. He wanted Barrett to join a convoy delivering aid to Ukraine.
“Absolutely not,” Barrett told him. “There’s a war there.”
He was also tied up at home. He was in the process of selling his construction business, the peaches at his organic orchard needed harvesting, and his four kids had packed schedules.
Barrett, an evangelical Christian, didn’t know much about Ukraine other than what he saw on the news. But as he did some research, he saw statistics about Christian fatalities in the war and felt God tug at his heart. He rearranged his schedule. In September, he joined a convoy of ambulances, sprinter vans, and cars full of aid.
Then, after the aid delivery, he joined a documentary film crew as a producer and investor, traveling 1,200 miles across the country to try to tell the stories of Ukrainian Christians persevering through persecution and war. He said he hopes he can show others what he saw.
“It doesn’t make sense for most evangelicals to come to Ukraine and see this themselves,” Barrett told Christianity Today. “The second best option is to virtually be able to show these stories through the film.”
The producers of A Faith Under Siege: Russia’s Hidden War on Ukraine’s Christians have also taken their message to lawmakers in Washington, DC. Steven Moore, co-executive producer with Ukrainian journalist Anna Shvetsova, has visited more than 120 congressional offices since 2022.
“We are trying to get good information to conservatives so they can make good decisions,” said Moore, who is also founder of the nonprofit Ukraine Freedom Project. His team has urged lawmakers to make religious freedom in Russian-occupied territory and the return of abducted children a part of ongoing negotiations.
Negotiations in May and June resulted in a series of prisoner exchanges but yielded little progress on ending the war. Russian president Vladimir Putin has said he is open to another round of peace talks, but at the same time declared “all of Ukraine” is part of Russia.
The past five months have seen an uptick in deadly Russian air campaigns, particularly in the capital.
From his top floor apartment in Kyiv, Moore has a front-row seat to Russian assaults. He hears the sirens, the whine of the Iranian Shahed drones, and sometimes the boom of an impact several seconds later. The nights are loud and he often struggles to get a good night’s sleep.
“The streets are not full until noon because everyone’s been up until 4 a.m. listening to Putin give his regards,” said Moore, an American who moved to Ukraine five days after the full-scale invasion began in 2022. “Every night is a record of drones and missiles Putin sends in.”
Barrett and Moore, who connected after Barrett decided to travel to Ukraine, have witnessed the war’s impact on civilians. They saw the destruction of homes and businesses and profiled grieving Ukrainians, including three men who lost their wives and children.
“One of the fathers, Serhiy Haidarzhy, who just lost his wife and daughter, was asked to speak at a funeral for another evangelical dad who lost his wife and three kids,” Barrett said. “Nobody needs to see a baby-shaped coffin.”
They also witnessed the invasion’s impact on churches.
At least 47 Ukrainian religious leaders have died in the fighting. Investigators have documented some cases where Russian soldiers tortured and killed Christian ministers and priests. The invasion has also damaged or destroyed more than 650 religious sites in Ukraine—including evangelical as well as Greek Catholic, Roman Catholic, and Ukrainian Orthodox churches.
Barrett said Moscow targets evangelical Christians in particular because of their perceived connections to the West. These churches are hard to control, he added, because their ultimate alliance isn’t to the state.
“We have just one leader,” Ukrainian Baptist Pavlo Unguryan says in the film. “It’s Jesus Christ.”
The filmmakers interviewed Mykhailo Brytsyn, pastor of Grace Church in Melitopol, and showed footage of Russian soldiers taking over a Grace Church service in September 2022.
They also have Baptist pastor Oleh Perkachenko detail his narrow escape after drones targeted a prayer meeting in his yard and returned to the same place two days later, destroying his parked car. A drone struck his van while he was driving his kids, then targeted his house when he returned home. His family escaped with minor injuries.
Moscow’s attacks on non–Russian Orthodox churches began during its first invasion in 2014. Kremlin forces stormed a Pentecostal church in Sloviansk and killed four members, including two of Pastor Oleksandr Pavenko’s sons, also pastors. In 2023, a third son died from a Russian rocket while he was ministering to troops in eastern Ukraine.
Barrett said his conversations with Christians in Ukraine deeply impacted his faith. The film team interviewed more than 40 people in seven cities. The Ukrainians reminded him of the persecuted church in the New Testament.
“You’ve got this scrappy group of believers that are being basically hunted by an empire that does not like them at all,” he said.
The situation remains precarious for Christians. In May, Presbyterian pastor Volodymyr Barishnev told CT he thinks most people in his city will leave if Russia occupies Kherson a second time. He’s not sure what would happen to his church.
The war is in its fourth year, and some Ukrainians have grown discouraged. Russia launched more than 5,000 drones at Ukraine during the month of June, and reports of 50,000 Russian troops gathering near the northeastern town of Sumy have stoked fears of another incursion.
Moore, however, hasn’t given up hope and plans to return to Washington this month for more meetings with lawmakers, including Lindsey Graham. The South Carolina senator said this week that President Donald Trump is ready for the Senate to vote on a new bill, sponsored by Graham, imposing sanctions on Russia and countries purchasing Moscow’s oil and gas. At the same time, the Trump administration decided last week to pause deliveries of some missile defense systems and weapons to Ukraine.
Barrett said Christians in Ukraine have drawn encouragement from knowing that their stories are being shared. They tell Barrett they welcome “the army of prayer and the army of support” they hope will come from Christians around the world who watch the film and see what’s happening to Ukrainians.
