Obstacles to banning Russian Church in Ukraine: Russia exploits global concerns about religious freedom

He said this on the Espreso TV.

“The lobbyists of the Moscow Patriarchate have worked very hard in the international arena, intimidating the international community with stories about violations of religious freedom in Ukraine. And it is not that Russia has destroyed all the possibilities of religious activity in the occupied territories that are not under the control of the occupation administration. It is not about the fact that more than 600 religious sites have been destroyed in whole or in part as a result of Russian aggression, and this destruction continues. Priests, pastors, faithful, religious communities of various denominations have been killed,” Metropolitan Yevstratiy emphasized.

According to the OCU spokesperson, Russian propaganda and its assistants in Ukraine are constantly trying to convince the international community that the Ukrainian government is violating freedom of religion against the jurisdiction of the Moscow Patriarchate.

“The international community perceives all of this as very painful, and Russian propaganda is taking advantage of this. The draft law submitted to the Verkhovna Rada is constantly being undermined. Any Russian activity in Ukraine is prohibited. But, unfortunately, except for religious activities, because they use the international community's concern about religious freedom in their favor,” said Metropolitan Yevstratiy.

Origin of the law banning the Moscow Patriarchate

Pro-Ukrainian political forces and social movements have been calling for the closure of the Moscow Patriarchate in Ukraine since the early years of independence. The authorities addressed this issue substantively only after the full-scale Russian invasion, when law enforcement began to document widespread assistance to the Russian army by Moscow Patriarchate structures and hierarchs.

On December 1, 2022, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy enacted a decision by the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine to ban the activities of religious organizations linked to Russian centers of influence in Ukraine. The preparation and consideration of the relevant government bill took almost a year.

The greatest resistance to the legislative process came from the parliamentary groups Platform for Life and Peace and Restoration of Ukraine, which include former members of Yanukovych's and Medvedchuk's Party of Regions, as well as certain factions within the Servant of the People party.

Ultimately, the draft law "On Amendments to Certain Laws of Ukraine on the Activities of Religious Organizations in Ukraine" (No. 8371), which bans the Moscow Patriarchate, was voted on in the first reading in October 2023 and signed by Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal.

MP Mykola Kniazhytskyi's alternative draft law precedes government version

Ukrainian politician and MP Mykola Kniazhytskyi (European Solidarity party), who successfully developed the law "On Ensuring the Functioning of the Ukrainian Language as the State Language" in 2019, proposed his own version of the law to terminate the activities of the Moscow Patriarchate Church. He criticized the government's draft law as "toothless."

His bill, No. 8221, titled "On Ensuring the Strengthening of National Security in the Field of Freedom of Conscience and Activities of Religious Organizations," aimed to introduce effective legal mechanisms to strip the Moscow Patriarchate of its influence on property and public opinion, rather than relying on purely declarative measures. Although the bill received a favorable opinion from the relevant parliamentary committee and was registered by the Verkhovna Rada on November 23, 2022, a week before the NSDC decision, it was never submitted to the session hall. The document received unanimous support from the committee on December 23, 2022.