A petition to denounce the law on ratification of the Istanbul Convention has been published on the website of the President of Ukraine.
The petition authors claim that this law does not meet the Ukrainian national interests and poses a threat to the national security of Ukraine.
Bishop Vitaly Kryvytsky, an ordinary of the Kyiv-Zhytomyr Roman Catholic Diocese, called for signing the petition. The hierarch expressed his opinion on the ratification of the Istanbul Convention and the need to abandon it in a comment to the Catholic magazine Credo.
"The very idea of ratifying the Istanbul Convention was really out of time, as it caused a lot of tension in society," Bishop says. "As has been repeatedly said and broken down point by point, the Istanbul Convention is not unambiguous in itself. The issue of its ratification was raised during the war in “turbo mode” without discussion with the public. It was always manipulatively stressed that our further European integration depends on it. We are well aware of the seven conditions that the European Union has put forward for Ukraine to further acquire EU membership. And none of these points contains the Istanbul Convention. If we take into account that the demands for ratification of the Istanbul Convention were put forward to Ukraine from two embassies, and this took the form of rather behind-the-scenes conversations, it is difficult to combine this with the EU's demands for Ukraine to fight corruption. Because it turns out that this corruption is used for our country to gain EU membership. Therefore, we believe that it was manipulation and corruption, which also does not speak in the best way about the Istanbul Convention itself."
"Given all this, we can, acting in the legal field, demand its denunciation, that is, return to the starting point, to the discussion stage, and only then talk about something. We see more harm in this convention than potential good, so we encourage all believers to sign a petition for denunciation," said Vitaly Kryvytsky.
"Along the way, I want to say that signing a petition is not an easy task, usually, only one person out of four signs it, and therefore we all the more need to unite around this process," the hierarch adds. "Of course, the very idea of the petition is somewhat conditional because the president may or may not take it into account, but this is important for history, for the general vision, because we know that there are much more people who oppose the Istanbul Convention than its supporters. During the war, many people may ignore this invitation, say that this is not the time, so we ask you to take the issue seriously and urge you to use this tool in order to demonstrate your will and position."