Ukraine wants to ban churches associated with Russia. The National Security and Defense Council on Friday instructed the government to draft a corresponding law. High-ranking personalities from the military and politics are represented on the committee. The Security Council also ordered investigations into alleged “subversive activities of Russian special services in Ukraine’s religious environment” and called for sanctions against unnamed individuals.
Ukraine must not be weakened from within, President Volodymyr Zelensky recently said in his nightly televised speech.
Five parishes searched by the Secret Service
Recently there have been a series of raids on parishes. Ukrainian authorities accuse them of taking orders from Moscow. Ukraine’s secret service (SBU) said on Friday it had searched at least five parishes belonging to a branch of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which was under the control of the Moscow Patriarchate until May.
Kiev Cave Monastery also targeted by Zelenskyj & Co.
The SBU also announced on Friday that it had informed a former diocese head that it suspected him of coordinating a pro-Russian information campaign with the head of the Russian Orthodox Church. According to Zelenskyi, Ukraine is also investigating whether the formerly Moscow-affiliated branch of the church would be allowed to operate at one of Ukraine’s holiest sites — the Kiev Pechersk Lavra, which was raided by the SBU on Nov. 22.
battle of the churches
The majority of Ukraine’s 43 million inhabitants are Orthodox Christians. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, there has been fierce competition between the Moscow-affiliated church and an independent Ukrainian church, which was proclaimed shortly after statehood in 1991. According to a July poll by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology, only four percent of Ukrainians have joined the Russia-affiliated church.
Russian Orthodox, Ukrainian Orthodox, autocephalous: it’s complicated
Although the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate clearly distanced itself from Moscow after the Russian invasion in February, nationalists, unlike the Russian Orthodox Church under Patriarch Cyril I, have long called for a ban on the ban. Instead, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, founded in 2018 with state support – a merger of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kiev Patriarchate and the Ukrainian autocephalous (with its own head, note) Orthodox Church – should be promoted.
Source: Krone
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