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Emancipation through faith? Roma Evangelical churches in Ukraine and their involvement with the internally displaced persons.

Text by Dr. Ignacy Jóźwiak, Centre of Migration Research, University of Warsaw.

Since February 2022, when Russia launched its full-scale aggression against Ukraine, up to 8 000 000 people have been internally displaced within the country, the majority of whom had either returned to their homes or left the country as of early 2026. Perhaps against the common perception, the majority of them settled in eastern and southern regions1 of Dnipro, Kharkiv and Donetsk. Still, many internally displaced persons (IDPs) are currently residing in Kyiv and the Kyiv region, as well as in the western-most regions of Lviv and Zakarpattia.  In the latter case, the estimations range between 70 000 and 400 000 (Karpatskyi Telehraf 2025, Interfax Ukraina 2025, IOM 2026). For a region with 1 200 000 inhabitants before 2022, either of these numbers is visible and entails changes in regional demography, economy as well as social and cultural life. It is even more meaningful, taken that the region’s administrative centre, the city of Uzhhorod – where most of the IDPs have settled – numbered less than 120 000 before the full-scale war. Among the newcomers are people from different regions of Ukraine and of different social, cultural, religious and ethnic backgrounds. 

In this short intervention, I zoom into the situation of Ukrainian Roma IDPs in Zakarpattia and activities of the local Roma who provide the IDPs with housing, humanitarian relief and other forms of everyday support. I specifically focus on the activity of the Roma Evangelical, Baptist and Pentecostal Churches as important social actors in this process.2  This subject matter remains understudied in the Ukrainian context and deserves broader attention from scholars, opinion makers and policymakers alike. It undermines the stereotypes about Roma as socially passive benefit receivers and spiritually passive followers of the dominant religions. The analysis is based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Zakarpattia between June 2024 and March 2026. For the purpose of anonymisation, I do not disclose its exact locations. 

Photo: Ignacy Jóźwiak

My study contributes to the knowledge about the Roma communities in war-torn Ukraine, while at the same time shedding light on the issues of civic and emancipatory aspects of religion and faith and the role of non-dominant congregations in the inclusion of ethnic minorities and marginalised groups not only into to the community of believers but also to the (imagined) community of citizens. I find it particularly meaningful in the contexts of war, resilience, resistance, displacement, dispossession and the struggle for social justice and recognition.

Roma IDPs in Zakarpattia 

Zakarpattia (in English also referred to as Transcarpathia) is the administrative region in Western Ukraine, which borders Poland, Slovakia, Hungary and Romania. This is also where nearly half of the Ukrainian Roma population used to live before the 2022 full-scale war.  Due to the complex legacy of the region and different impact it took on the local populations, Roma communities in Zakarpattia are diverse in terms of languages, religion and traditions. For example, in Uzhhorod and some nearby settlements, they speak the Carpathian dialect of the Roma language, whereas in the towns of Mukachevo and Beregovo they speak Hungarian as their mother tongue. There are also communities in the region who speak other dialects of the Roma language or use Ukrainian as their mother tongue. Most Roma in known to me locations in Zakarpattia live in the Roma only neighbourhoods and settlements, hardly visited by the non-Roma, which makes their social situation and life experiences different from most of the Roma in Ukraine’s East and South.

The number of Roma among the IDPs in Zakarpattia is difficult to estimate for at least two reasons: (1) the data about ethnic backgrounds of resettled Ukrainian citizens is not collected, (2) not all newcomers are registered, which is the general case with the IDPs in Ukraine regardless of their ethnicity. What we definitely know though, is that since February 2022 thousands of Roma have stayed in Zakarpattia either on their way abroad or before deciding to return to their places of origin in other regions of the country. Hundreds of them still lived there as of spring 2026. Diversity of languages, dialects and traditions is also characteristic for the newcomers, who originate from different Roma groups (such as Servur’a, Lovara, Krym’a, Kišyn’ovar’a). Therefore, we cannot speak of two distinct Romani “groups” or “communities” – the locals and the IDPs since “both of them” are superdiverse. 

Minority churches and minorities within them 

Just like in other countries of Central and Eastern Europe3, many Roma in Ukraine are the followers of Evangelical churches, predominantly Pentecostal and Baptist that can be characterised as ‘charismatic’, even if their leaders not necessary identified as such. Zakarpattia is not an exception in this respect. To my knowledge, there are no statistics or even estimations about this phenomenon, but it can be said that these churches are gaining increasing popularity among Roma in Ukraine, perhaps greater than among the majority society. Some of these churches are a part of broader national and international structures, others act independently, even if informally networked with other churches in Zakarpattia and beyond. Those in Zakarpattia, are active exclusively among the Roma (even if there are networked with non-Roma church structures), are run by the Romani pastors and use Roma language in their services. Roma pastors and entire Roma congregations function also in other regions of Ukraine, but the Roma communities beyond Zakarpattia are often followers of “non-ethnic churches” run by the non-Roma pastors. 

Photo: Ignacy Jóźwiak

Roma pastors have been providing spiritual service to local populations, humanitarian relief in the frontline territories and support for the Ukrainian servicemen since 2014 and some of them served as military chaplains already before 2022. These activities intensified following the 2022 Russia’s full-scale aggression and cooperation between different Evangelical churches has also increased. Some of them found shelter through church networks, however, many were taken care of by pastors after initially  being considered unaccommodatable at the reception and accommodation centres. During my fieldwork I met those, who had been  accommodated in church facilities or in the houses left empty by the congregants, who have themselves gone abroad. The pastors also assist with various emergencies, provide material support, help to find employment or assist with administrative issues related to their IDP statuses (or the lack thereof). Pastors, and believers can also be met among the IDPs and some of them have re-established their activities in Zakarpattia in cooperation with, or at least acknowledgment from, the local communities. 

Emancipatory potential? 

While there is strong Roma civil society all over Ukraine, the role of Evangelical churches among the Roma in Ukraine is difficult to overestimate. There are reasons to consider these faith-based initiatives of particular importance especially for their emancipatory civic potential. In many settlements in Zakarpattia, these churches and their pastors are next to the only actors present in the Roma neighbourhoods and settlements.  It is through these churches that we find Roma among the military chaplains in the armed forces of Ukraine and among those who provide humanitarian and moral relief in the frontline territories.  It is because these churches and through these churches that Roma individuals and the whole communities get more recognition, not only as believers – members of the community of the faithful – but also as socially engaged Ukrainian citizens. The extent to which the congregations serve as a kind of mediators between the Roma communities and the state and society needs some further studies. And so do the limits of this “mediated emancipation”.  

FUNDING INFORMATION:

This work was carried out with funding from the National Science Centre, Poland, under the OPUS call within the Weave programme No. 2022/47/I/HS5/03011, as part of the project “Unequal Citizenship and Transnational Mobilisation of Polish, Czech and Ukrainian Roma in the Face of the War in Ukraine”.

***References:

  1.  The UN agencies, established the number of IDPs in Ukraine at 3 700 000 in early 2026 while estimating the number of returnees as 4 400 000 (IOM 2026). ↩︎
  2. At the same time, we shall also acknowledge huge role of secular Roma NGOs working with the Roma IDPs in Ukraine (see: Chiricli 2022, Jovanovic, Kondur and Korunovska 2024, Jóźwiak 2025). ↩︎
  3. Romani evangelicalism is well-researched in Romania, Bulgaria and Slovakia (Podolinská 2017; Podolinská 2021; Slavkova 2025; Voiculescu 2017) but understudied in Ukraine↩︎

Bibliography:

  1. Chiricli (2022). Experience of internally displaced Roma people during war, Chiricli Roma Women Fund & Ukrainian Women’s Fund. 
  2. Interfax Ukraina (2025). Закарпатська область прийняла близько 400 тис. переселенців – депутат облради Цебер, https://interfax.com.ua/news/general/1117566.html 
  3. IOM (2026). Ukraine internal displacement report. Round 22 – January 2026, International Organization for Migration, https://dtm.iom.int/reports/ukraine-internal-displacement-report-general-population-survey-round-22-january-2026 
  4. Jovanovic, Z.,  Kondur, Y., Korunovska N. (2024). Fighting for a farer future. The impact of the war in Ukraine on Roma and lessons for post-war reconstruction efforts, Roma Foundation for Europe. 
  5. Jóźwiak, I. (2025). Unity in diversity? Ukrainian Roma among the Internally Displaced Persons in Western Ukraine, CMR Spotlight 3(69): 14-16, https://www.migracje.uw.edu.pl/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Spotlight-MARCH-2025.pdf 
  6. Karpatskyi Telehraf (2025). Скільки ВПО зареєстровано на Закарпатті, https://karpat-telehraf.net/skilky-vpo-zareyestrovano-na-zakarpatti/ 
  7. Podolinská, T. Z. (2021). Traditional Romani Christianity vs Pentecostal and neo-Protestant Christianity: A grounded picture of religiosity and spirituality among the Roma in the twenty-first century in Slovakia. Romani Studies, 31(2).
  8. Podolinská, T. Z. (2017). Roma in Slovakia-silent and invisible minority (Social networking and pastoral pentecostal discourse as a case of giving voice and positive visibility). Slovenský národopis, 65(2).
  9. Slavkova, M. (2025). Conversion, Leadership and Identity of the Evangelical Roma in Bulgaria, Leiden-Boston: Brill.
  10. Voiculescu, C. (2017). Nomad self-governance and disaffected power versus semiological state apparatus of capture: The case of Roma Pentecostalism. Critical Research on Religion, 5(2)

***Disclaimer

The views and opinions expressed in the blog posts are solely those of the respective authors and do not necessarily reflect the position of Entanglements. Polish and Ukrainian Studies blog or its team. The authors of the texts bear full responsibility for the accuracy of the facts presented in the publications and the correctness of the quotations.

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OpenEdition suggests that you cite this post as follows:
entanglements (March 18, 2026). Emancipation through faith? Roma Evangelical churches in Ukraine and their involvement with the internally displaced persons. Entanglements. Retrieved June 16, 2026 from https://entanglements.hypotheses.org/6620


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