Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

The repercussions of outlawing the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate could be more serious than Kyiv seems to realize.

Ukraine has passed a law banning religious organizations with links to Russia. The main target of the law is the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate (UOCMP), which was established in 1990 as a self-governing church under the canonical jurisdiction of the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC).

The Ukrainian government held back from taking such a step immediately after the full-scale invasion by Russia: after all, the UOCMP is the country’s biggest church. However, hopes there could be a gradual reconciliation between different branches of Orthodoxy have faded amid wartime polarization. The formal ban is a major moment in a long-running dispute, and will have far-reaching consequences for Ukraine both at home and abroad.

When the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU) was established in 2018 under the jurisdiction of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, it was hoped that the UOCMP and the OCU would gradually merge. But the war has dramatically reduced the space for dialogue and compromise. Instead, the continued presence of a religious organization formally affiliated with Moscow has angered patriotic Ukrainians and provoked the suspicion of the authorities.

UOCMP efforts in recent years to show it is independent of Moscow have not convinced officials. Nor has it helped that many UOCMP members on Russian-occupied territory have gone over to the Russian side.

The law banning religious organizations linked to Russia was first introduced into the Verkhovna Rada in 2023 at the initiative of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. While the president was uninterested in religious policy prior to the war, he apparently now sees the issue as a useful tool to further mobilize Ukrainian patriots.

The law provides for a nine-month transition period during which the UOCMP must either merge with the OCU or find a convincing way to distance itself from Moscow. If not, there will be a court decision formally banning the UOCMP that will mean it is deregistered, deprived of the right to own property, and stopped from conducting religious activities. In essence, it will be forced to go underground.

It’s unclear how this will actually work in practice. Every Orthodox parish is a separate legal entity, which means there will have to be thousands of separate legal proceedings. The authorities will likely begin at the top before using a standardized procedure for individual parishes.

Of course, all this could take years to work its way through the courts. Representatives of the UOCMP are already threatening legal challenges on the basis that the law contravenes Ukraine’s international obligations. Either way, Kyiv will face accusations of engaging in religious persecution. 

Zelensky signed the law on Ukrainian Independence Day: a symbolic move designed to appeal to Ukrainian patriots who have been given a recent boost by the successful invasion of Russia’s Kursk region. Nor is this a baseless political calculation on Zelensky’s behalf: surveys show that 63 percent of Ukrainians support a ban on the UOCMP, and 82 percent do not trust UOCMP head Metropolitan Onufriy.

However, it remains an awkward fact that the UOCMP is still a major Ukrainian religious organization. As of May 2024, it had 10,587 parishes in Ukraine compared to the OCU’s 8,075. Even the war has not done much to change this disparity. Between February 2022 and May 2024, just 685 UOCMP parishes went over to the OCU—and they were mostly in the center and west of the country. The number of such switchovers in the war-torn southeast have been negligible (there have been two cases in the Odesa region, one in the Dnipropetrovsk region, and no cases in the frontline Kharkiv region).

Legal pressure on the UOCMP exerted via the new law could end up creating martyrs. If forced underground, the UOCMP will become an organization deeply hostile to Kyiv and ripe for infiltration by Russia.

It appears that Zelensky’s government is not taking the risks seriously, and there is a lot of ignorance about the UOCMP and church life in the Ukrainian government. Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk, for example, said on August 20 that Ukraine should “stop the influence of the harmful Russian church on Ukrainians not only in Ukraine, but also outside its borders. In any foreign country where there are Ukrainians, there should be our Ukrainian church.” She seems unaware that under canon law, the OCU cannot open parishes outside Ukraine.

Voting on the new law in Ukraine’s parliament revealed some committed opposition to the ban. Those who voted against it included not only deputies from the pro-Russian group Opposition Platform–For Life, but also several deputies from Zelensky’s Servant of the People party. The law was also criticized by Oleksiy Arestovych, a former presidential adviser. It’s true that this is a minority view in modern Ukraine, but religious issues could become a trampoline for the emergence of political leaders in the future, particularly in the southeast. The boxer Oleksandr Usyk, for example—one of Ukraine’s most popular sportspeople—is a vocal public supporter of the UOCMP.

The international context of the ban is also significant. The position of Russia and its allies, including Belarus and Serbia, is well known. But the OCU faces other problems—including that it has not yet even been recognized by the Orthodox churches of NATO countries like Romania and Bulgaria. Indeed, some Orthodox leaders see the OCU as a political invention and prefer to recognize the UOCMP. Bulgaria’s Patriarch Daniel, for example, who is well known for his pro-Russian views, has said the UOCMP ban is discrimination. It has also been criticized by the Pope and the World Council of Churches.  

One of the reasons Kyiv took so long to outlaw the UOCMP was for fear of a hostile reaction from conservatives in the United States. The lawyer Robert Amsterdam, for example, who is linked to former U.S. president Donald Trump, actively promotes the UOCMP.

The current arguments over the loyalties of the UOCMP will be hard to resolve without creating long-term problems. On the one hand, Russian aggression has made it impossible for the Moscow branch of the Orthodox Church in Eastern Europe to retain its previous form: it is seen as a tool of the Kremlin used to meddle in the affairs of its neighbors. On the other hand, battling it sets a worrying precedent in which national security is prioritized over religious freedom.

Of course, prioritizing national security is exactly the approach Russia has taken when it comes to the ROC’s religious competitors. In occupied Ukrainian territory, for example, OCU parishes have simply been absorbed by the ROC. Andriy Yermak, Zelensky’s chief of staff, has accused the ROC and its affiliates of being an “instrument in the hands of the state for bolstering its own power.” But isn’t that the role Kyiv wants for the OCU? The longer the war in Ukraine continues, the more it is tearing the social fabric of both Russia and Ukraine, and undermining the principle of religious tolerance.

Konstantin Skorkin is an independent researcher studying political history of Donbass. His work on the conflict in Donbas and Ukrainian politics has appeared in Foreign Affairs, The Moscow Times, Republic.