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Ukraine attempts to ban Moscow-linked UOC

09 December 2022

REUTERS/Zohra Bensemra

Lyudmiyla, 64, who sheltered for weeks in the basement of the Lavra monastery that belongs to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate, with scores of others, during battles between Russian troops and Ukrainian forces

THE government of Ukraine has tabled legislation enabling it to ban the country’s Moscow-linked Orthodox Church (UOC) and transfer its parishes to a new independent Church, in response to repeated demands from politicians and local councils.

An official statement said this week: “The National Security and Defence Council has considered the activities of religious organisations on the territory of Ukraine in conditions of military aggression by the Russian Federation, with the aim of ensuring spiritual independence, preventing social divisions, consolidating Ukrainian society and protecting national interests.

“This draft law will make it impossible for religious organisations affiliated with centres of influence in the Russian Federation to operate in Ukraine, in accordance with norms of international law governing freedom of conscience and Ukraine’s obligations in the Council of Europe. . . The security service, national police and other state bodies will also intensify measures to detect and counter subversive activities by Russian special services within Ukraine’s religious environment.”

The draft law was published on Tuesday, as Ukrainian security agents continued searching UOC churches and monasteries amid preparations for parts of Kyiv’s historic Pechersk Lavra, or Monastery of the Caves, to be handed over to the independent Ukrainian Orthodox Church.

Speaking about the move in an address on TV, President Zelensky said that his government was acting “legally and democratically” in the national interest, by seeking to prevent “actors dependent on the aggressor state” from “weakening Ukraine from within”.

The proposed ban was condemned, however, by the UOC’s spokesman, Archpriest Mykolai Danylevich, who said that his Church’s clergy would never agree to transfer to the independent branch, and branded it a “political game” by Russia’s Orthodox Moscow Patriarchate.

“This Bill not only violates legal norms — it also reveals a loss of remaining common sense, since the UOC has always supported its people and the Ukrainian state,” the Patriarchate’s spokesman, Vladimir Legoyda, said in a social-media post at the weekend.

“The Ukrainian leadership is acting against its own defenceless population, against believers and clergy from the largest and only canonical Orthodox Church.”

Meanwhile, Ukraine’s SBU security service confirmed that it had searched UOC monasteries and diocesan offices in Poltava and Kremenchuk to “protect the population from provocations and terrorist acts”, and had also placed nine UOC bishops and metropolitans, mostly from Russian-occupied areas, on a sanctions list, for supporting invasion forces.

In a statement on Tuesday, the spokesman for the independent Ukrainian Orthodox Church, Archbishop Yevstratiy (Zoria), said that the UOC had continued to show a “systematic attachment to the Russian Orthodox Church and everything it represents”, despite its claims to have loosened ties, and had also shown “obsolescent thinking” and a lack of “communication with society”.

A prominent UOC deacon and businessman, Vadim Novinsky, said that he would take court action against the draft law and sanctions, while media commentators warned that attempts to suppress the UOC’s 10,000 parishes would fuel Russian claims to be protecting Orthodox Christians from persecution.

The Rector of the UOC’s Kyiv Theological Academy, Archbishop Sylvester (Stoychev), urged Orthodox seminarians on Tuesday not to believe “media myths and false news” about their Church, while another UOC leader, Metropolitan Augustyn (Markevic), praised Ukrainian soldiers for their “heroic struggle against Russian aggressors and invaders”.

“From the first days of full-scale invasion by troops of the Russian Federation, the UOC has supported our army, advocated the preservation of the territorial integrity and state independence, and condemned the aggressor’s actions”, the Metropolitan said in a speech for Ukraine’s Armed Forces Day.

“Every day, clergy and faithful from our Holy Church, with the entire nation, have provided comprehensive assistance to soldiers, migrants, and civilians suffering from this terrible, barbaric war, praying for our defenders and asking the Lord to help them overcome all difficulties and grant victory to our long-suffering Ukraine.”

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