At the beginning of the session, Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada Andriy Parubiy said that the District Administrative Court of Kyiv recognized as unlawful the actions of the Speaker of Parliament in connection with the adoption of the bill on the mandatory renaming of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate. The site of the District Administrative Court of Kyiv and the Unified State Registry of Court Decisions do not currently have information on this decision.
At the beginning of the session, Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada Andriy Parubiy said that the District Administrative Court of Kyiv recognized as unlawful the actions of the Speaker of Parliament in connection with the adoption of the bill on the mandatory renaming of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate. The site of the District Administrative Court of Kyiv and the Unified State Registry of Court Decisions do not currently have information on this decision.
Parubiy claims that this decision of the district court is not final and will be appealed, according to the reporter of #Bukvy.
The Parliament Speaker emphasizes that the UOC-MP should be called the Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine.
Earlier, a member of the Opposition Bloc, MP Vadym Novynsky, wrote on his Facebook page that the District Administrative Court of Kyiv ruled that the actions of Andriy Parubiy, the Speaker of the Verkhovna Rada, were unlawful, having satisfied the claim of MP Oleksandr Dolzhenkov of the Opposition Bloc faction. It is referred to adoption of the bill “On Amendments to the Law of Ukraine ‘On Freedom of Conscience and Religious Organizations’”.
Novynsky also noted that the bill concerned an attempt to "forcefully rename" the UOC-MP into the Russian Church in Ukraine.
On December 20, the MPs supported the bill on the renaming of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate. On the same day, the document was signed by the Parliament Speaker, Andriy Parubiy.
On January 18, 49 MPs of the Verkhovna Rada appealed the compliance of the law with the Constitution in the Constitutional Court, as it obliges the UOC-Moscow Patriarchate to indicate in its title affiliation with Russia.
On January 21, it was reported that the MPs’ submission to the Constitutional Court of Ukraine concerning the constitutionality of the law -- which obliges the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate to indicate its affiliation with the Russian Orthodox Church in its name -- does not suspend the effect of this law.