Cabinet official calls UOC believers potentially destructive
Bohdan Okhrymenko of the Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War said Russia is not interested in UOC clerics for exchanges.
The Ukrainian Orthodox Church has found itself at the center of new accusations. On May 4, 2026, Bohdan Okhrymenko, head of the Secretariat of the Cabinet’s Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War, said UOC believers could act as destructive elements. The official made the statement to Ukrinform.
Okhrymenko was speaking in the context of prisoner-exchange negotiations. According to him, the Russian side has shown no interest in exchanging clergy of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church who are accused of treason and collaborationism.
“Recently, they have not been interested in priests. Perhaps they think that sooner or later we will release them anyway and they will return to what they were doing before. They will use them to destabilize the situation in Ukraine,” Okhrymenko said.
He complained that the UOC “is still quite strong here.”
“Believers who blindly trust the sermons of Russian priests may be destructive elements. Perhaps that is why they are not taking them back – so that in the future they can use them for information and psychological influence operations,” Okhrymenko said.
As the UOJ reported, an adviser to the deputy head of the President’s Office previously said the authorities were not banning the UOC but offering it a choice between the OCU and Constantinople. Statements by Ukrainian officials about the UOC and its faithful have periodically become a matter of public debate. Earlier, an editor at the state broadcaster Suspilne said she felt “physically sick from UOC prayers.”
