The Ukrainian parliament gave initial approval on Thursday to a law that would ban the Moscow-linked Ukrainian Orthodox Church after Kyiv accused it of collaborating with Russia following last year’s invasion.
The UOC – which is distinct from the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU) – says it no longer aligned with the Russian Orthodox Church and denies the charges levelled at it by Kyiv and said the draft law would be unconstitutional.
Yaroslav Zheleznyak, a member of parliament, said on the Telegram messaging app that deputies had voted to support the bill in its first reading. It has to be backed in a second reading and approved by the president to go in to force.
The law would ban the activities of religious organisations affiliated with centres of influence “in a state that carries out armed aggression against Ukraine”, and such activities could be terminated by a court of law.
Another lawmaker, Iryna Herashchenko, said the vote was historic, and described it a first step towards removing “Moscow priests from the Ukrainian land”.
The UOC said the draft law, one of several similar bills registered in parliament, did not comply with the European convention on human rights or Ukraine’s constitution.
Describing itself as an “independent and separate church”, the UOC accused Kyiv of trying to pass it off as affiliated with the Russian Orthodox Church and portraying its Ukrainian clergymen and believers as “agents of the Russian Federation”.
Ukrainian authorities and many people in Ukraine had for years seen the UOC as loyal to Moscow, and cracked down on the church after Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.
A government commission has ruled that the UOC is still canonically linked to Russia despite the church declaring that it cut ties with the Russian Orthodox Church in May 2022.
The church’s second most senior priest, Metropolitan Pavlo, has been notified he is suspected of inciting inter-religious hatred and distributing materials justifying Russian aggression. He has denied the accusations.
Ukraine’s Security Service said on Thursday 68 criminal cases, including accusations of treason, had been initiated against UOC representatives since Russia’s invasion last year.
Political analyst Volodymyr Fesenko said a ban on the UOC was unlikely to halt its activities and could be challenged in Ukraine and at the European court of human rights.
Fesenko suggested the church could register as a new entity with “no reference whatsoever to canonical ties” with Russia.