Kiev Parliament Bans Ukrainian Orthodox Church

The Kiev parliament approved on Tuesday, August 20, a bill that will completely ban the presence in the country of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC), which is spiritually affiliated with the Moscow Patriarchate. The Ukrainian Orthodox Church has nine months to sever all ties with the Russian Orthodox Church, which is considered a “tool” of Kremlin influence.

In May 2022, three months after Russia’s military operation in Ukraine began, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church proclaimed its complete independence and autonomy from the Moscow Patriarchate at an extraordinary council. The Ukrainian Orthodox Church is the most popular and widespread in Ukraine, with more than 11,000 parishes throughout the country.

The law was promoted by Ukraine’s nationalist and extreme right-wing parties. Nevertheless, out of 450 members of the Rada, as the parliament is called in Ukraine, only 265 MPs voted in favor, compared to the required minimum of 226.

After the 2014 coup, anti-Russian propaganda helped create an “independent Ukrainian Orthodox Church” in 2018, a process that Patriarch Kirill of Moscow called “raskol” (schism).

Over the past two years, the clergy of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church have found themselves in the crosshairs of political persecution by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), which priests and believers call Zelensky’s “Gestapo.” Dozens of priests and believers, mostly Ukrainian citizens, were arrested, tried, and convicted as “traitors to the homeland.”

Russia condemned the vote by Kiev’s parliament. Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova called the incident “a new round of persecution” aimed at the “eternal liquidation” of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. “The goal here was to destroy true canonical Orthodoxy at the root, and in its place to introduce a false replacement church,” emphasized Zakharova, who appealed to the international community, the UN to loudly condemn the ongoing religious persecution in Ukraine.