Ukraine’s new law prohibiting the Russian Orthodox Church’s (ROC) activity in the country, as well as that of other religious organizations linked with Russia, is a sign of the increasing securitization of relations between state and religion in Ukraine since Russia’s invasion, writes Dmytro Vovk (Yaroslav Mudryi National Law University, Ukraine) in the Nachrichtendienst Östliche Kirchen (August 28). Along with inter-Orthodox competition, the war has led to state intervention into religious affairs, and the new law can be seen as accelerating that trend. While the ROC as such does not operate in the country, the law also targets the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) under Metropolitan Onufriy, which, although it declared its independence from Moscow after the Russian invasion, has not claimed the canonical status of autocephaly at this point. Its bishops continue to be considered by the Moscow Patriarchate as members of an associated autonomous church and are accordingly listed in its ecclesiastical yearbook, as Reinhard Flogaus (Humboldt University, Berlin) notes (Nachrichtendienst Östliche Kirchen, August 28).
The head of the UOC, Metropolitans Onufriy
(source: https://en.lb.ua/news/2022/05/27/15550_ukrainian_orthodox_church_moscow.html).
In Ukraine itself there has been little support for the UOC from other religious organizations, while a number of religious figures abroad have expressed concerns about a violation of religious
freedom, from the pope to the World Council of Churches, as well as various Orthodox churches. Warnings that the Ukrainian state might be on a “slippery slope” had already been made on previous occasions (see RW, March 2023). From the perspective of religious freedom and international human rights, Vovk lists a number of problematic points about the law, since it does not require proof that targeted organizations have been involved in illegal activities to be banned, and the ability of the Ukrainian authorities to handle those issues impartially is questionable. However, at the core, “the decisive question in this conflict is whether the UOC is prepared to completely disassociate itself from the Moscow Patriarchate,” Flogaus comments.
More widely, as a result of the war in Ukraine, several states in Central and Eastern Europe want to make sure that the ROC—closely associated with Russia—does not use local Orthodox churches as agents of influence. This is not only the case in Baltic countries (see RW, July 2023). In the Czech Republic, the Senate Security Committee has called for an investigation into the Orthodox Church of the Czech Lands and Slovakia (Nachrichtendienst Östliche Kirchen, August 29). As an autocephalous church, it is not dependent on the ROC, but the committee fears that since 2014 it has increasingly come under the influence of people with links to Russian power structures. Foreign Minister Jan Lipavský said he would not consider the ROC a “legitimate church” and its representatives “real clergy,” but rather part of Russian influence operations.
(Nachrichtendienst Östliche Kirchen, https://noek.info/)
