Why SBU should deal with branch of Moscow church in Ukraine

In the United States, al-Qaeda is not dealt with by a conditional specialized unit of the State Department, but by the intelligence services and the army. Just like in Israel, Hamas is handled by the IDF. Not some kind of religious regulator. Although Hamas probably also has some kind of "spiritual center abroad." But both al-Qaeda and Hamas are primarily terrorists, regardless of who they pray to, and their activities are therefore a matter of security.

But according to Ukrainian lawmakers, the Russian Orthodox Church is a church. And it is not the SBU that should be dealing with it, but the State Service of Ukraine for Ethnic Policy and Freedom of Conscience.

Although Moscow's priests bless the war in Ukraine and have even agreed that Russia's nuclear weapons were created by "an indescribable divine providence."

The law "on the prohibition of the Russian Orthodox Church" adopted in the first reading has a flawed logic and drives the process of its liquidation into a long, multi-year bureaucratic procedure with a separate case for each individual parish (and there are several thousand of them).

I understand that many deputies who voted for this law are aware of the problem. Because their votes are a beginning, which at least demonstrates that the political will to liquidate the church still exists. 

However, the law needs to be fundamentally revised before the second reading. It is still a long way from "banning the Russian Orthodox Church."

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About the author. Serhiy Taran, political scientist

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