“The argument about the ‘sole canonicity’ of the Moscow Patriarchate is a classic example of historical and theological absurdity,” says Professor Mykola Palinchak

Army. Language. Faith. No, this is not an election slogan. These are the principal safeguards of the foundations of an independent state, standing guard over its territorial integrity, the historical achievements of its national culture and identity, and the spiritual principles and norms of the public life of the nation that built it. Here we shall speak about faith, or rather about its earthly reflection – the church.

Modern Ukraine is a multiconfessional state. Yet the absolute majority of its population are Orthodox Christians – roughly 80–84% among those who have settled on a denomination. There are at present 15 officially recognised autocephalous (independent) Orthodox churches in the world: 5 ancient patriarchates headed by the Orthodox Church of Constantinople, which holds the primacy of honour among all the Orthodox churches of the world and is led by Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, and 10 local churches, among them the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU), which received the Tomos of autocephaly from the Ecumenical Patriarch on 6 January 2019.

The canonical recognition of the autocephaly of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine did not, however, put an end to the long-running confrontation between its various “factions” in Ukraine. Today several mutually hostile Orthodox churches exist in the country de facto, which gives rise to bitter confrontation between their faithful.

How does this affect the national unity of Ukrainians at a time of war for their own independence, and what steps should the state and society take in order to put an end to confrontation on religious grounds? We discuss these and other questions of spiritual life with Mykola Palinchak, Doctor of Political Sciences, professor, dean of the Faculty of International Economic Relations at Uzhhorod University, a respected scholar of relations between state and church and head of the Transcarpathian regional organisation of the Ukrainian Association of Researchers of Religion.

In brief:

• Prince Volodymyr the Great’s decision to baptise Kyivan Rus was a pragmatic and deeply considered geopolitical step
• The Moscow church obtained autocephaly and a patriarchate through an arbitrary schism, blackmail and the house arrest of the Greek clergy
• The confessional situation in the times of the UPR and in the first years of the Ukrainian SSR travelled a rapid and tragic path
• Stalin turned the ROC into the state religion of a communist dictatorship and a geopolitical instrument of the Kremlin
• Countering collaborationism and hidden pro-Russian influence among the clergy of the UOC is one of the sharpest challenges to the national security and social unity of Ukraine

Professor Palinchak, please remind our readers what exactly prompted Prince Volodymyr Sviatoslavovych to be baptised himself and to introduce Christianity in Kyivan Rus. What geopolitical factors compelled him to take such a step?

Prince Volodymyr the Great’s decision to accept Christianity and to baptise Kyivan Rus in 988 was not a sudden religious revelation. It was a pragmatic and deeply considered geopolitical step, intended to save the state from international isolation and internal disintegration. The main internal and external geopolitical factors that compelled Volodymyr to take this step were the following:

1. The crisis of paganism and internal separatism. Kyivan Rus was an enormous empire made up of many Slavic and non-Slavic tribes. Each of them had its own gods, which provoked constant separatism and internecine strife.

2. The threat of international isolation. By the end of the tenth century almost the whole of Europe had already abandoned paganism. Christian countries looked on Rus as a “savage”, barbarian territory. This blocked any possibility of concluding political alliances on equal terms and of developing full-scale trade. Paganism condemned the state to geopolitical solitude and to hostility on the part of its neighbours.

3. The opportune moment in relations with Byzantium. The immediate catalyst of the baptism was a military and political conflict in the Byzantine Empire – the only world superpower of the time. In 987–988 the Byzantine emperor Basil II found himself on the verge of losing power because of a powerful internal revolt of his military commanders. He turned to Volodymyr for military assistance. Volodymyr agreed to send an army of 6,000 men to crush the rebellion, but set a colossal geopolitical price: marriage to the emperor’s own sister, Princess Anna Porphyrogenita. For Byzantium this was a humiliation: their princesses had never married “barbarians”. The condition of the marriage was the obligatory baptism of Volodymyr himself and of his country. When, after the victory, the emperor began to delay the fulfilment of his promise, Volodymyr went to war against the Byzantine possessions in Crimea and laid siege to Korsun (Chersonesus), forcing the Greeks to hand over the princess.

And when, and under what circumstances, did Orthodoxy reach the Muscovites?

At the time of the baptism of Kyiv on 15 July 988 Moscow did not exist at all! The first mention of it in the chronicles appeared only 159 years later, in 1147. Orthodoxy penetrated very slowly into the remote Finno-Ugric forests of Zalissia (the Rostov-Suzdal lands, the basin of the Oka and the Moskva rivers). The active Christianisation of these territories began only at the end of the eleventh and in the twelfth century, under the rule of the descendants of Yaroslav the Wise. This means that in religious terms these lands lagged more than 100–150 years behind Kyiv.

Moscow proclaimed its own church independence (autocephaly) arbitrarily and uncanonically as late as 1448. World Orthodoxy did not recognise it for more than 140 years, until the Moscow Patriarchate was founded by blackmailing the Patriarch of Constantinople in 1589. The Moscow church obtained autocephaly and the patriarchate through an arbitrary schism, blackmail and the house arrest of the Greek clergy.

The whole process consisted of two stages. The year 1448 – the “arbitrary schism”: Moscow accused Constantinople of betrayal because of the union with the Catholics and appointed its own metropolitan, Jonah, without the permission of the Ecumenical Patriarch. Because of this, for 141 years (until 1589) the Moscow church remained in isolation – world Orthodoxy regarded it as an uncanonical “schism”.

The year 1589 – the “blackmail of the patriarch”: in order to legalise its church, Boris Godunov lured to Moscow Ecumenical Patriarch Jeremias II, who had come in search of financial assistance. He was placed under house arrest for almost half a year and threatened with not being allowed to leave the country. Under this pressure the intimidated patriarch signed the papers and consecrated the first Moscow patriarch, Job.

Let us move to times closer to us. What was the confessional situation in Ukraine in the period of the UPR and in the first years of the Ukrainian SSR?

The confessional situation in the times of the Ukrainian People’s Republic and in the first years of the Ukrainian SSR travelled a rapid and tragic path – from attempts at a national revival of the church to its total destruction by the Soviet totalitarian regime.

In the years of the liberation struggle (1917–1920) the religious life of Ukraine was shaped by a powerful wave of church self-determination and emancipation from Moscow. A clear course towards autocephaly was taken. The lower Ukrainian clergy and the national intelligentsia demanded independence from the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC). The senior bishops, however, mostly Russians by origin, resisted Ukrainisation furiously.

In January 1919 the Directorate of the UPR, headed by Symon Petliura, adopted a law on the autocephaly of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. Because of the constant fighting and the occupation, however, it proved impossible to implement it in full.

On 14–30 October 1921 (already after the fall of the UPR, but on a wave of national enthusiasm) the First All-Ukrainian Church Council was convened. Since not a single Russian bishop appeared, the priests resorted to an early Christian practice and consecrated their own metropolitan, Vasyl Lypkivskyi. Thus the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church (UAOC) officially came into being; it rejected imperial diktat and introduced services in the Ukrainian language.

In the first years of the Ukrainian SSR (the 1920s) the tactic of “divide and rule” prevailed. Having established their power, the Bolsheviks declared religion “the opium of the people”. At the beginning of the 1920s, however, the communist regime did not yet have the strength to destroy faith openly, and so it resorted to the cunning tactic of artificial church schisms.

At first the Soviet authorities turned a blind eye to the Ukrainian autocephalists and even supported them, in order to weaken the influence of the dominant pro-Russian patriarchal church (the Tikhonite ROC).

The Bolshevik secret services (the GPU) artificially created and financed a subversive movement of collaborators loyal to Soviet power – the Renovationists. Its aim was to destroy traditional Orthodoxy from within.

Thus, in the Ukraine of the 1920s, three large Orthodox currents competed at one and the same time: the supporters of the Moscow Patriarchate, the UAOC and the artificial Soviet “Living Church”.

Mass Bolshevik repression against the church began soon afterwards. The brutal campaign to destroy religious institutions unfolded in several waves.

The first wave – the confiscation of church valuables (1921–1922). Using the large-scale famine in the Volga region and in the south of Ukraine as a cynical pretext, Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky initiated the total plundering of churches. The real aim was not to save the starving but to undermine the financial independence of the church and to provoke conflicts that would set off mass terror against the “reactionary clergy”.

The second wave – the destruction of the UAOC. As soon as Soviet power had grown stronger, the UAOC was declared a “Petliurite nest” and a carrier of “bourgeois nationalism”. The prelude to the reprisals was the fabricated trial of the “Union for the Liberation of Ukraine” (1930), at which the UAOC was accused of anti-state activity. In 1930 the church was forced to dissolve itself, and its leader, the “people’s metropolitan” Vasyl Lypkivskyi, was shot by the NKVD in 1937.

The third wave – the “Godless Five-Year Plan” (1932–1937). According to Joseph Stalin’s plan, by 1937 the name of God was to be completely forgotten on the territory of the USSR. The Great Terror began: thousands of clergy of all faiths (Orthodox, Catholics, Protestants, Muslims, Jews) were shot in accordance with NKVD quotas or deported to the camps of the Gulag. Churches were blown up with explosives on a mass scale or turned into grain stores, clubs and stables.

The consequences of the repression were appalling. They led to:

– the physical extermination of the clergy – by the end of the 1930s the church structure of the Ukrainian SSR had been almost entirely destroyed, and almost the whole episcopate and thousands of parish priests of the UAOC had been shot or subjected to repression;

– the total destruction of cultural heritage – Ukraine lost hundreds of unique architectural monuments of the Middle Ages and of the Cossack baroque (St Michael’s Golden-Domed Cathedral, the Military St Nicholas Cathedral in Kyiv and others);

– the driving of religion underground – official religious life came to an end. Believers were forced to pray in secret, and religious rites moved deep underground.

From the first days of the German-Soviet war in 1941 the inhabitants of the territories occupied by the Germans restored church life on a mass scale. This prompted the dictator Joseph Stalin to meet the hierarchs of the Russian church on 4 September 1943 and, under the complete control of the NKVD, to permit the election of a patriarch and the opening of some theological seminaries and churches. Could you tell us how Stalin and the ROC established modern Muscovite Orthodoxy as the state religion of a communist dictatorship?

In September 1943 Stalin made a radical turn in the religious policy of the USSR. After a decade and a half of the total extermination of the clergy, the dictator decided to restore the Moscow Patriarchate. The official starting point of the modern Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) was the night-time reception by Joseph Stalin in the Kremlin, on 4 September 1943, of the three surviving metropolitans – Sergius, Alexy and Nikolai.

This step turned the ROC into what was effectively the state religion of a communist dictatorship and a powerful geopolitical instrument of the Kremlin. The Soviet secret services implemented this along several strategic lines.

1. The creation of a “Church of the NKGB/KGB” – complete personnel and operational control. The new church structure was built not on the principles of canonical freedom, but as a branch of the Soviet secret services.

2. Immediately after the meeting in the Kremlin, a special supervisory body was created under the Council of People’s Commissars of the USSR – the Council for the Affairs of the ROC. It was headed by state security colonel Georgy Karpov, who had previously been engaged in repression against the clergy. Church hierarchs could not take a single step, appoint a priest or open a parish without the approval of a secret service officer.

3. Recruitment and the agent network. The posts of bishops and of the key metropolitans were given exclusively to those who had passed a thorough vetting by the NKGB (later the MGB and the KGB) and had agreed to secret cooperation. According to declassified archives, the senior leadership of the ROC had official agent pseudonyms and reported regularly to their handlers at the Lubyanka.

4. A swift council. Only 4 days after the meeting with the dictator, on 8 September 1943, a council convened by the Soviet authorities elected Metropolitan Sergius (Stragorodsky) Patriarch of Moscow. For the sake of speed, the participants in the council were flown to Kyiv and Moscow on NKGB military aircraft.

5. A geopolitical toolkit (the Orthodox Vatican). Stalin sought to use the restored church to extend Soviet influence in the international arena, especially in the Balkans and in the Middle East. The Kremlin set the ROC the task of subordinating the other ancient patriarchates (Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem) and of turning Moscow into an “Orthodox Vatican” – a centre of world Christianity loyal to the USSR.

The ROC became the main ideological battering ram of Soviet diplomacy against the Pope of Rome and the Western bloc in the conditions of the Cold War, branding Catholicism as “an accomplice of American imperialism”.

6. Stalin’s “model” provided that on the territories controlled by the USSR only one Orthodox structure was to exist – an obedient ROC. All alternative or national churches were to be brutally destroyed.

7. A complete ban on the UAOC – any attempt to restore Ukrainian autocephaly on the territories liberated from the Germans was harshly punished as “bourgeois nationalism”.

What was religious life like in the post-war period?

In the first post-war years the USSR completely destroyed the Greek Catholic Church (UGCC) and forcibly handed over all its property to the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC). In Western Ukraine, which had been annexed to the USSR, the Soviet authorities staged a pseudo-council in Lviv in 1946. The Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church was declared liquidated, and its property, churches and faithful were forcibly transferred to the administration of the Moscow Patriarchate. Those bishops and priests who, led by Josyf Slipyj, refused to betray their faith and go over to the ROC were sent to the camps of the Gulag – more than 3,000 priests and monks were deported to Siberia together with their families. Believers who did not want to attend Moscow churches were persecuted and convicted of “anti-Soviet activity”. The UGCC went deep underground and became a “Church in the catacombs”. The brutal repression was accompanied by the looting of churches and the confiscation of property. All the Greek Catholic churches (more than 3,000 of them) and monasteries were handed over to the ROC free of charge. Church valuables, unique libraries and icons were confiscated – some were transferred to the Moscow Patriarchate, the rest were stolen or destroyed.

The same was done with the Mukachevo Greek Catholic eparchy in Transcarpathia. On the orders of Stalin and Khrushchev, NKVD general Sudoplatov planned and personally carried out, on 1 November 1947, a special operation to murder the recalcitrant bishop Teodor Romzha, who was the spiritual mainstay of the eparchy. After his death the eparchy was liquidated, and its churches and property were handed over to the ROC according to the already well-practised scheme.

In the first years of Ukraine’s state independence the question of restoring autocephaly also arose. Why did this process take so long and prove so painful?

The restoration of autocephaly in the 1990s became an arena of fierce geopolitical and domestic political struggle. The process stretched over decades and was extraordinarily painful because of Moscow’s resistance, internal splits among the Ukrainian clergy and the indecisiveness of the authorities of the time.

Why did the road to autocephaly prove so difficult? The Russian Orthodox Church was in a panic at the prospect of losing Ukraine, which accounted for almost half of its parishes and provided colossal financial revenues. In order to get ahead of the movement for real independence, in October 1990 the ROC resorted to a cunning manoeuvre: it renamed its Ukrainian Exarchate the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) and granted it the status of being “independent in its governance”. This was a legal trap. The UOC received broad autonomy but remained an inseparable part of the Moscow Patriarchate. The majority of the faithful and of the priests perceived this as “independence already obtained”, which slowed down the creation of a genuinely autocephalous church.

When Metropolitan Filaret (Denysenko), who headed the UOC, nevertheless demanded full autocephaly from Moscow in 1991, the ROC staged a church coup. In May 1992, under the control of the Russian secret services and the ROC, a council was hastily convened in Kharkiv which removed Filaret and elected Metropolitan Volodymyr (Sabodan), who was loyal to Moscow.

Filaret did not submit; he joined with part of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church and created the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kyiv Patriarchate (UOC-KP).

Three parallel Orthodox structures emerged in Ukraine (the UOC of the Moscow Patriarchate, the UOC of the Kyiv Patriarchate and the UAOC), which began an exhausting war over churches, property and the allegiance of the faithful.

Moscow used all its diplomatic and religious influence to block recognition of the Ukrainian patriots in the world. The ROC anathematised Filaret and branded the Kyiv Patriarchate and the UAOC as “schismatics”.

Why did the 2019 Tomos not become a unifying factor for Ukrainians?

The granting of the Tomos of autocephaly to the Orthodox Church of Ukraine in January 2019 was an epoch-making event for the religious and state independence of Ukraine. This document, however, was unable to unite all of Ukrainian Orthodoxy instantly into a single structure, and religious division in society went on for many years more.

The main reasons for this phenomenon lie in Moscow’s resistance, in internal conflicts and in legal collisions.

1. The categorical refusal and counter-offensive of the UOC-MP. The Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate completely ignored the Unification Council of 2018 and rejected the Tomos. The senior leadership of the UOC-MP launched a powerful propaganda campaign, branding the OCU as “uncanonical” and the Tomos as a “political project”. For years millions of the faithful were instilled with the fear that going over to the new church was “the sin of schism”.

At the same time furious administrative pressure was applied – pro-Russian bishops harshly punished the few priests who expressed a wish to move to the OCU and suspended them from the ministry.

2. Legal wars over property and communities. The process of parishes moving from the Moscow Patriarchate to the OCU was often accompanied by bitter local conflicts. Ukrainian legislation had no clear and rapid mechanisms for transferring property by decision of the majority of a religious community. Every such transfer was blocked by UOC-MP lawyers through the courts, which spilled over into protracted confrontations on the ground. Images of “locked doors” and of brawls outside churches were actively used by Russian propaganda to discredit the Tomos around the world.

3. A blow to the unity of the newly created OCU came from the internal conflict with honorary patriarch Filaret (Denysenko). Immediately after the Tomos had been received, Filaret declared that the terms of the document made the OCU “dependent on Constantinople” (because its jurisdiction was limited to the borders of Ukraine and it was forbidden to prepare chrism on its own). Dissatisfied at the loss of real sole authority, in June 2019 Filaret announced the restoration of the UOC of the Kyiv Patriarchate and left the OCU. Although an absolute minority followed him, this public scandal substantially weakened the moral authority of the new autocephalous church in the first stages of its formation.

4. The international factor and the position of world Orthodoxy. The Russian Orthodox Church deployed all the resources of Russian diplomacy and intelligence to block recognition of the OCU by other local churches of the world. Moscow intimidated the other patriarchates with the prospect of a split in the whole of world Orthodoxy and broke off relations with Constantinople. Because of this the process of international recognition of the OCU proceeded slowly. Apart from Constantinople, it was subsequently recognised only by the Churches of Greece and Cyprus and by the Patriarchate of Alexandria. Part of Ukrainian society and of the hesitant clergy perceived this as a sign of the “inferiority” or incompleteness of the autocephaly process.

How can the principles of Christian morality be reconciled with the support given by Kirill and the clergy of the ROC to the war of aggression against Ukraine, with the blessing of missiles and with the murder and torture of the civilian population?

From the standpoint of authentic Christian doctrine, of dogmatics and of the generally recognised norms of Christian morality, the actions of Patriarch Kirill (Gundyayev) and of the leadership of the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) are in no way consistent with Christianity and are a direct violation of the commandments of Christ.

Many authoritative theologians and scholars of religion worldwide, as well as leaders of other Christian churches, including Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew and Pope Francis, define the present-day ideology of the ROC not as Christianity but as a heretical distortion of the faith (phyletism), a sacral legitimisation of war crimes and religious extremism.

In the ROC, a war of aggression is reconciled with religious rhetoric by substituting an imperial political ideology for Christian values.

Clergy of the so-called Ukrainian Orthodox Church often become outright collaborators during the war. Those who are further from the front are frequently “shadow” supporters of the Muscovites and influence their parishioners accordingly. How is society to overcome this disgrace? Perhaps in the way Prince Volodymyr once did?

Countering collaborationism and hidden pro-Russian influence among the clergy of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (in unity with the Moscow Patriarchate) is one of the sharpest challenges to the national security and social unity of Ukraine during the war.

A modern democratic society cannot copy the methods of Prince Volodymyr… Instead, Ukraine today is tackling this problem within the legal framework, combining state legislative mechanisms, the work of the security services and the civic stance of the faithful themselves.

The key instrument with which Ukrainian society and the Ukrainian state are fighting this phenomenon is the law banning religious organisations linked to the Russian Federation. In August 2024 the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine passed the historic Law No. 3894-IX “On the Protection of the Constitutional Order in the Sphere of Activity of Religious Organisations”, which is often called the law banning the Moscow Patriarchate.

How does it work? The law does not ban religion or faith as such. It bans the activity of any religious organisation whose governing centre is located in the aggressor state (the Russian Federation).

The State Service for Ethnic Policy and Freedom of Conscience (DESS) carries out an examination, and if a link with Moscow is confirmed, the community is given time to sever it. If the organisation refuses, its activity is terminated through the courts.

One of the main arguments of the parishioners of Moscow Patriarchate churches and of their priests is the propaganda claim about the “sole” canonicity of the MP. But what canonicity can there be any talk of, when even the construction of the main Christian church of Rus-Ukraine – St Sophia of Kyiv – was completed 110 years before Moscow was founded? Please debunk this absurdity.

The argument about the “sole canonicity” of the Moscow Patriarchate, which its supporters in Ukraine have been manipulating for years, is a classic example of historical and theological absurdity. They deliberately substitute for the notion of “canonicity” (conformity with church rules) the notion of “length of service in power”, completely distorting the real facts.

This myth can be debunked with three irrefutable arguments: the chronological, the canonical and the geopolitical.

1. The chronological absurdity: a mother cannot be “younger” than her daughter!

• 988 – Kyiv accepted baptism and became the centre of the canonical Kyiv Metropolis under the omophorion of the Ecumenical (Constantinople) Patriarchate;

• 1011–1037 – St Sophia of Kyiv, the primatial cathedral and the heart of Ukrainian Orthodoxy, was built and consecrated in Kyiv;

• 1147 – the first mention of Moscow, as a small frontier settlement among the forests of Suzdal.

The Kyivan Mother Church is a century and a half older than Moscow, and its main cathedral had already been standing for more than 110 years by the time the first wooden fences appeared in the marshes of Zalissia. To claim that Kyiv has to ask Moscow for “canonicity” is the same as claiming that parents receive the right to live from their newborn children.

2. The canonical absurdity: Moscow itself was an “uncanonical schism” for 141 years. When representatives of the UOC-MP brand other Ukrainian churches with the word “schismatics”, they “forget” their own history. Historically, then, it is precisely Moscow that is guilty of the first and largest schism in the history of East Slavic Orthodoxy.

3. The demolition of the myth of the ROC’s “canonical territory” in Ukraine. Moscow’s main canonical trump card was that in 1686 Ecumenical Patriarch Dionysius IV issued a synodal letter which supposedly handed the Kyiv Metropolis over to the Patriarch of Moscow on lease or for administration. Moscow interpreted this as “eternal ownership”. In October 2018, however, the Synod of the Ecumenical Patriarchate (the only authority entitled to issue and to revoke such acts) carried out a thorough analysis of the documents and officially annulled the decision of 1686.

Constantinople stated clearly:

1. The transfer of 1686 was temporary and was made under duress (because of the occupation);

2. Moscow violated all the terms of the act (in particular, it ceased to commemorate the Ecumenical Patriarch during services in Kyiv);

3. Ukraine never has been and is not the lawful canonical territory of the Moscow Patriarchate.

Why did the 2019 Tomos cross out the “canonicity” of the UOC-MP? With the issuing of the Tomos of autocephaly to the OCU in 2019 the canonical reality changed for ever. The Ecumenical Patriarchate officially declared that within the borders of Ukraine there exists only one lawful Orthodox church – the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU), headed by Metropolitan Epiphanius.

How are the actions of the current Ukrainian authorities on this issue to be assessed?

The actions of the current Ukrainian authorities with regard to religious organisations linked to the aggressor state are assessed, both in the international arena and inside the country, as a forced but lawful step to protect national security. In a time of existential war the religious sphere cannot remain a cover for a hostile agent network or for the ideological justification of genocide.

Ukraine’s legislative steps (in particular Law No. 3894-IX of 2024) are fully in line with European legal norms. International law, in particular the European Convention on Human Rights (Article 9), states clearly that freedom of religion may be restricted by law in the interests of public safety, of the protection of the constitutional order and of the rights and freedoms of others. Ukraine is not banning Orthodoxy, faith or prayer – it is dismantling the Kremlin’s administrative levers of influence.

How would you advise your fellow citizens to act in this situation, drawing on the experience of other countries?

Several important pieces of advice can be given to Ukrainians in this situation.

1. The Estonian and Latvian experience: religious de-occupation through law. After the restoration of their independence, and especially after 2022, Estonia and Latvia found themselves in an identical situation with the local eparchies of the ROC. The parliament of Latvia obliged its Orthodox church by law to withdraw completely from subordination to the Moscow Patriarchate. The Estonian authorities recognised the ROC as an organisation that supports terrorism and issued an ultimatum to the local clergy – a break with Moscow or closure.

Ukrainians should therefore give active support to the state bodies in their demands on local UOC-MP parishes. Communities on the ground have the right to demand from their priests a clear and legally recorded change of status – the complete removal from their statutes of any mention of a link with Patriarch Kirill.

2. The Czech and Balkan experience: countering agent influence. In 2024–2025 the Czech Republic began large-scale checks on representatives of the ROC on its territory over suspicions of espionage, while Bulgaria and North Macedonia expelled dozens of Russian priests (including the head of the ROC’s representation church in Sofia) for activity incompatible with diplomatic or religious status.

So, if a priest in your locality is engaged in covert propaganda, spreads narratives about “one people”, calls for submission to the aggressor or discredits the Armed Forces of Ukraine, this is no longer religious activity but plain anti-state activity. Such facts must be reported officially and without delay to the state authorities.

Interview by Vasyl Ilnytskyi