Is Ukraine banning the Ukrainian Orthodox Church?
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Ukraine has made a long-anticipated move against the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate, once Ukraine’s largest religious organization.
On 20 August, its parliament adopted a second reading of a bill prohibiting the operation of religious organizations affiliated with Russia. Although the UOC MP was not named, it is clearly the target: the church’s affiliation with its metropoly, the Russian Orthodox Church, had become increasingly incomprehensible throughout two years of Russia’s war against Ukraine. And though, officially, ties with Moscow were severed in the early months of Russia’s 2022 invasion, experts see this as rather a declarative half-measure.
The law’s adoption is a culmination of growing pressure on the UOC MP: its role in promoting the ideology of the “Russian world,” the driver of Russia’s invasion, came increasingly under scrutiny. Ukrainian security services launched raids against UOC MP churches and monasteries while select clergy were arrested under accusation of aiding the Russian invasion. The UOC MP was evicted from its prized diamond, the famed Kyiv-Perchersk Lavra monastery, amid a campaign of parishes switching to the competing independent Orthodox Church of Ukraine and accusations of state overreach.
These events have prompted the UOC MP to lead an international campaign accusing the Ukrainian state of religious persecution, an initiative that was particularly fruitful among American Republicans and was promoted, among others, by conservative media personality Tucker Carlson.
However, a deeper glance at the situation reveals a religious organization being rescued by the Ukrainian state from a dead end of its own making. We talked to experts to understand why the UOC MP settled for half-measures, why the Ukrainian state is making this move, whether the adopted law will indeed ban the UOC MP in Ukraine, and if religious reconciliation is on the agenda.
Will the law actually ban the UOC MP?
The law does not mention the UOC MP; instead, it bans the Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine. The UOC MP will not be able to be part of the ROC structure or affiliated with it in any way.
Specifically, the law bans the activities of foreign religious organizations that are “are located in a state that is recognized as having committed or is committing armed aggression against Ukraine and/or temporarily occupied a part of the territory of Ukraine” and “directly or indirectly (including through public statements of their leaders or other governing bodies) support armed aggression against Ukraine,” particularly – the ROC.
If the UOC MP is found to be connected to the ROC, it will lose its official status as a registered religious organization. This means it will lose some privileges: the ability to open bank accounts, pay official salaries, own and rent property and temples, and access to lower utility prices—Ukraine’s perk for religious organizations.
However, as an unregistered religious organization, it can still continue its activities, as Ukraine is a country with religious freedom, unlike, for example, China, where organizations must register with the state to function. The UOC MP could, for instance, transfer ownership of its property to private persons and keep using it, says religious expert Tetiana Derkatch, co-founder of the Center of Religious Security, and author of the book “Moscow Patriarchate in Ukraine: Anatomy of Treason.”
The law gives the UOC MP nine months to finally sever the church-canonical relations with the Russian Orthodox Church. A procedure to establish its affiliation is foreseen, and after the nine months are over, DESS can take the UOC MP structures to court, according to Andriy Smyrnov, historian and religious scholar at the Ostroh Academy.
The State Agency for Ethnopolitics and Freedom of Religion (DESS) will convene a commission to analyze the statutes of roughly 8,000 UOC MP parishes and issue a list of religious organizations affiliated with the Russian Orthodox Church. They will all have time to sever their relations, meaning to change their statutes. DESS will review each parish separately because the UOC MP does not have the status of a single legal entity: rather, for the law, it is a network of affiliated religious organizations.
“But it has an administrative center, the Kyiv Metropoly, and the DESS may sue it if it doesn’t sever its relations with the Russian Orthodox Church,” Smyrnov says.
Another major change that the law brings is that for the first time in Ukraine’s legal space, it defines the “Russian world” ideology, considered to be the ideological driver of Russia’s war against Ukraine, and prohibits its popularization by religious organizations:
“The ideology of the ‘Russian world’ is a Russian neocolonial doctrine based on chauvinistic, Nazi, racist, xenophobic, religious ideas, images and goals, the destruction of Ukraine, the genocide of the Ukrainian people, and the non-recognition of the sovereignty of Ukraine and other states, which aims at the violent expansion of the Russian supranational imperial space as a way of realizing the special civilizational right of Russians to mass murder, state terrorism, military invasion of other states, occupation of territories, and the expansion of the canonical territory of the Russian Orthodox Church beyond the territory of the Russian Federation.”
What was the problem with the UOC MP?
The UOC MP has been viewed as Russia’s soft power tool for decades, promoting a soft version of the Russian world ideology. In a nutshell, this ideology envisions the “Holy Rus,” a callback to the medieval state of the Kyivan Rus, the predecessor of modern-day Ukrane, Russia, and Belarus, fighting against the “demonic west.”
“Many researchers have shown that the ‘Russian world’ ideology is a criminal ideology. The UOC MP was a channel to spread Russian narratives about the ‘Holy Rus,’ that Ukraine should not exist as an independent state but rather as Russia’s ‘Malorossiya’ province, about Russia’s special role in the world, about the West’s negative influence on the church and the state. This is why its propaganda will be banned,” Smyrnov says.
He views the ban on “Russian world” ideology as “historical,” alongside Ukraine’s recently adopted decommunization and decolonization laws, which aim to break the grip of Russia’s colonial legacy in Ukraine.
Ukraine’s Security Service insisted on this part of the law, as currently Ukraine prohibits justifying Russian aggression but not “Russian world” propaganda, which led to these narratives being freely shared in social media, Smyrnov says. Now prosecuting these actions will be easier.
Is the UOC MP actually still connected to Russia?
In the early days of Russia’s full-scale invasion in May 2022, the UOC MP condemned Russian aggression and declared it is severing ties with the ROC, of which it is a self-governed part. However, an expert committee found that it is still linked to its metropoly.
The key is in its central statute, that of the Kyiv Metropoly.
“It mentions a letter from Moscow Patriarch Aleksey II, which indicates that the UOC MP remains an integral part of the ROC. Metropolitan Onufriy is a permanent member of the Russian Orthodox Synod. All the bishops of the UOC MP are members of the Bishops’ Council of the ROC,” Andriy Smyrnov says.
The UOC MP finds itself in a hybrid situation.
“It doesn’t fit any established status within global Orthodoxy. It’s not autocephalous, it’s not autonomous, it’s not completely dependent on Moscow. The church itself can’t explain what it is. If you ask Metropolitan Onufriy what the status of this church is, he’d be unable to give a meaningful explanation,” theologian Cyril Hovorun believes.
At the same time, this church is not monolithic.
“There is a whole cohort of [Ukrainian] patriots in the UOC MP, who truly believe they are not part of the Moscow Patriarchate. There are those who think they are part of the Moscow Patriarchate, but are a Ukrainian church, those who don’t care, and also those who think they are a Russian church,” Tetiana Derkatch explains.
However, the pro-Russian lobby is strong. Most of the bishops are pro-Russian, and so is the Orthodox oligarch Vadym Novynskyi, whose influence on the UOC MP is immense, believes Andriy Smyrnov. These bishops still maintain phone relations with the Moscow Patriarchy
Nevertheless, there is a growing demand for clarity and change inside the UOC MP. One of the voices insisting that their church’s lingering ties to Moscow constitute “criminal inaction” is Serhiy Bortnyk, professor at the UOC MP Kyiv Spiritual Academy. He believes that the law’s intention to “make the distinction between UOC MP and the ROC clearer” is a positive action, as it can prompt the UOC MP leadership to act:
“The 2022 council was about administrative independence, that the UOC MP would not implement decisions of ROC councils or other requests from Moscow. But the canonical connection was preserved, and the UOC MP cannot solve this problem by itself. If the UOC MP wants to remain in Ukraine after 2.5 years of war, it needs to make steps in this canonical direction.”
Theologian Cyril Hovorun agrees: he believes that the active members of the UOC MP who want their church to really cut ties with the Russian Orthodox Church can use the law as leverage to force their leadership to act.
