On August 20, 2024, the Ukrainian Verkhovna Rada passed a law on the protection of constitutional order in the sphere of religious organizations. It came into force on September 23 of the same year.
“Since the Russian Orthodox Church is the ideological continuation of the regime of an aggressive state and has participated in war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in the name of the Russian Federation and the ideology of the ‘Russian world,’ the activities of the Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine are prohibited,” the law states.
The law also makes it possible to ban the activities of Ukrainian religious organizations that are linked to organizations based in a country that is “involved in armed aggression against Ukraine.”
The law thus affects the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC), also known as the UOC of the Moscow Patriarchate. The UOC is part of the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC), which was and is headed by Moscow Patriarch Kirill, who supports the Kremlin's policies.
“We are breaking away from Moscow”
On May 27, 2022, three months after the start of the full-scale invasion, the UOC decided to become independent—according to its own statement, it is no longer part of the ROC.
More specifically, according to its own charter, it became a “fully independent and autonomous” church. However, Orthodox canon law does not recognize such a designation.
The “Conclusion of the religious assessment of the Statute on the Management of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church regarding the existence of an ecclesiastical-canonical connection with the Moscow Patriarchate,” published on the website of the State Service for Ethnic Policy and Freedom of Conscience, states that the UOC and the ROC remain connected.
"The adoption of the new version of the Statute on the Administration of the UOC (dated May 27, 2022) and the decision of the Council of the UOC did not lead to the severance of the ecclesiastical-canonical connection of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church with the Russian Orthodox Church. The status of the UOC as a structural unit of the ROC, which enjoys certain rights of independence but does not constitute an autocephalous church, remains unchanged.“
Only an autocephalous church that receives a corresponding document—a tomos—confirming this status is completely ”independent." The absence of such a document is an essential feature of the subordination of a religious organization—in this case, the subordination of the UOC to the ROC.
The website of the Russian Orthodox Church, or in other words, the Moscow Patriarchate, states that “the Ukrainian Orthodox Church is a self-governing church with extensive autonomy rights within the Moscow Patriarchate.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin stated in February 2024 that “the Ukrainian authorities are destroying the Russian Orthodox Church,” referring to Kiev's actions against the UOC, which is part of the Russian Orthodox Church.
The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) therefore stated on August 27 this year that, based on the available evidence, it did not consider the UOC to be independent, as it remained legally affiliated with the ROC.
Apart from its formal subordination to the Moscow Patriarchate, the UOC also behaves ambiguously with regard to the Russian-Ukrainian war, and several dozen of its clergy are being tried and convicted for their attitude toward Moscow: approval of Russian aggression, treason, collaboration with Russia, and other charges.
Orthodox Christianity will not be abolished
“If this church [UOC, editor's note] really wanted change, it would become part of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU). The teachings of these churches are essentially the same; it's just a question of who leads them, who has the power, who makes the decisions, and who owns the money,” said MP Natalija Pipová (Hlas) about the UOC.
The Orthodox Church of Ukraine (PCU) was formed in 2018 through the merger of the UPC of the Kiev Patriarchate, the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church, and part of the UPC of the Moscow Patriarchate.
While the UOC is subordinate to the Moscow Patriarchate, the OCU received the status of an autocephalous church and its tomos directly from the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, which also granted autocephaly to the Orthodox Church in the Czech Lands and Slovakia in 1998.
Since the establishment of a unified Orthodox Church independent of Moscow, Kiev had hoped that both believers and parishes would transfer from the UOC to the OCU in large numbers. However, as reported by the DoKostola.sk portal, “the expected scenario did not materialize, and instead, according to some sources, more than 8,000 parishes remain in the UOC with their original ties to the Moscow Patriarchate.” .
On May 20 of this year, the nine-month legal period expired during which the UOC had the opportunity to additionally separate from the ROC, but it did not do so.
"There were negative reactions from many international organizations, governments, and even some countries. The UOC leadership basically decided to do nothing and rely on this international reaction, this critical reaction to the law. They simply decided to wait until they succeed—probably through negotiations between Ukraine, Russia, and the US—in preserving the structure in its current form," explained religious scholar Anatoliy Babynskyj to Radio Svoboda.
Viktor Yelenskyj, head of Ukraine's State Service for Ethnic Policy and Freedom of Conscience, stated on August 20 that if the UPC continues to ignore the “demands of the Ukrainian state” after August 24, proceedings will be initiated to dissolve it in accordance with the law.
On August 29, the State Service of Ukraine for Ethnic Policy and Freedom of Conscience therefore filed a lawsuit with the Supreme Court with the aim of terminating the activities of the UPC. However, it is not known how long the court proceedings will take.
At the same time, Zelensky explained that if the court decides to dissolve the UOC, the church will lose its status as a legal entity and thus its legal capacity, which would mean that the communities of this church would lose their central institution.
However, he emphasized that this does not mean that the parishes would be forced to join another church: “The state does not force anyone to join the Orthodox Church of Ukraine or any other church.” By May of this year, all parishes of the UOC had been transferred to the jurisdiction of the OCU only in the Lviv and Ivano-Frankivsk regions.
According to surveys and estimates, most Ukrainian Orthodox Christians today profess allegiance to the PCU favored by Kyiv, while the UOC of the Moscow Patriarchate is gradually losing popularity among the faithful.
The last nationwide census in Ukraine took place in 2001, but it did not record the religious affiliation of the population. All data on religious affiliation is based on surveys.
In 2019, 14.2 percent of Ukrainian citizens surveyed said they belonged to the UOC, compared to 13.8 percent in 2020. In 2010, four years before the start of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict in Crimea and Donbass, 24 percent of respondents said they belonged to the UOC.
In the survey conducted in July 2022, a few months after the invasion began, only 4 percent of respondents identified with the Moscow Patriarchate. In 2024, 5.5 percent of respondents in the survey identified with it.
In this latest survey, 55.4 percent of respondents professed to be Orthodox Christians, the lowest figure since 2000, when 66 percent of respondents professed to be Orthodox Christians.
In contrast, the number of followers of the Roman Catholic and Greek Catholic churches rose slightly: 1 percent of respondents professed Roman Catholic Christianity (compared to 0.5 percent in 2000) and 11.9 percent professed Greek Catholic Christianity, with the number of Greek Catholic Christians rising steadily since 2000 (7.6 percent).
Similarly, the number of Protestants rose from 2 percent in 2000 to 2.5 percent in 2024. The number of “simple Christians” also rose from 6.9 percent at the turn of the century to 9.8 percent in 2024.
The number of Jews remained unchanged at 0.3 percent, while the development of the number of Muslims, pagans, Hindus, and Buddhists cannot be objectively assessed due to their small numbers.
“Christian Church”
Kiev is not the only one that considers the issue of the church to be important. Putin is aware of the significance of the UOC and has therefore spoken out several times in favor of maintaining its legal status.
“Independence and dignified conditions for the development of the Orthodox Church, the Christian Church in Ukraine,” was named by the Russian president as one of the conditions for a possible ceasefire on August 1, 2025.
A volunteer with the Russian air defense force specializing in drones, Smirnov, told Štandard that, in his opinion, the autocephalous PCU “must not supplant” the UOC of the Moscow Patriarchate.
Religious freedom
The Ukrainian law has been criticized by Human Rights Watch, which believes that the legislation restricts the religious freedom of Ukrainian citizens.
The World Council of Churches, which is “deeply concerned about the possibility of unjustified collective punishment of an entire religious community and the violation of the principles of freedom of religion or belief,” is calling for caution in applying the law.
“International law allows Ukraine, as well as other countries, to restrict religious freedom for legitimate reasons—in this case, to curb the subversive activities of the Russian Church on our territory,” Zelensky explained to the Ukrainian newspaper Pravda in September 2024.
“The law does not provide one framework for one religious organization and another for another, and is therefore not discriminatory... Subordination to the Moscow Patriarchate is not an inseparable part of the Orthodox faith—if you do not submit to a particular patriarchate, you do not cease to be Orthodox,” added the head of Ukraine's State Service for Ethnic Policy and Freedom of Conscience.