After the occupation, the number of religious organizations in Crimea halved, according to a lawyer

Ukrainian lawyer, Head of the JustCraft project Sergey Zayets said it in the comments for Krym.Realii.

"The number of religious communities in Crimea has decreased by more than five times if we compare 2014 and the beginning of 2016.

Under Russian law, Crimean organizations that re-registered at that time retained all the rights acquired under Ukraine. For example, the right of ownership or lease of a room. Later, new religious organizations that are associated with Ukrainian ones were registered, thanks to this, the number of religious organizations began to increase slightly. So the total number of all Crimean religious organizations has not yet reached even half of what was operating in Crimea at the beginning of 2014," the lawyer said.

Zayets represents the interests of the Crimean Diocese of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in the ECHR. In early 2021, at that time, Russia's representative to the ECHR, Mikhail Galperin, submitted to the court a document according to which the number of registered religious communities in Crimea increased to 907. This is 40.9% of their total number in 2014. According to Zayets, 527 out of 907 communities are newly registered legal entities.

According to the Ministry of Culture of Ukraine, at the beginning of 2014, there were 2,220 religious organizations operating in Crimea (2,083 in the arc and 137 in Sevastopol). This includes parishes, communities, theological schools, and monasteries. These religious organizations belonged to at least 43 different faiths.

According to the state service of Ukraine for ethnic policy and freedom of conscience, provided at the request of lawyer Zayets, at the beginning of 2014 in Crimea, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate owned 603 religious organizations (27.2% of the total number of parishes), the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kyiv Patriarchate - 46 (2.1% of all parishes). Muslim communities included 1,015 parishes (45.7% of their total number on the peninsula).