The Ukrainian Orthodox Church: the period of persecution
The Austrian analytical center ABC Political Studies has published a large article by Anna Radziwill devoted to the Ukrainian church issue. We offer the text to your attention with some abridgments.
Speaking at the General Assembly of the United Nations, the President of the United States Donald Trump declared that today it is precisely the Christian churches that are subject to the greatest persecution in the world. We do not know whether he had in mind the Armenian Apostolic Church, which entered into a sharp conflict with the government of Armenia. We do not know whether Trump’s words concerned the Montenegrin Orthodox Church, which experienced an attempt of pressure on the part of the former government. And still less do we know whether the words of the American leader referred to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which for several years now has been undergoing serious pressure from the state, and this pressure is also supported by the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew.
From that moment the Ukrainian Orthodox Church was inextricably connected with the Russian Orthodox Church. After Ukraine gained independence, the UOC in fact obtained autonomy and self-government, the connection with the Moscow Patriarchate remained nominal: representatives of the Ukrainian episcopate were members of the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church, the Patriarch of Moscow and All Rus’ was commemorated during divine service, and the UOC received the myrrh from Moscow – the ecclesiastical symbol of grace (obtaining permission for its own production of myrrh is a very complex process from the canonical point of view).
At the dawn of Ukraine’s independence there arose a serious ecclesiastical schism, instigated by the former Metropolitan of Kyiv Filaret (Denysenko). In 1990, after the death of Patriarch Pimen, Filaret was appointed Patriarchal Locum Tenens and believed that it was precisely he who would be elected Patriarch of Moscow and All Rus’. But the situation developed in such a way that the new Patriarch was elected to be Alexy II (von Ridiger). The offended Metropolitan Filaret declared the independence of the Orthodox Church within Ukraine, supported the creation of the Kyiv Patriarchate, and in 1995 proclaimed himself Patriarch, for which he was excommunicated from the Russian Orthodox Church.
Thus, in Ukraine two parallel Orthodox Churches began to exist – the canonical UOC and the non-canonical, unrecognised by other Churches, Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kyiv Patriarchate (UOC-KP). And that is not counting the small formations such as the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church or the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad. But it was precisely the UOC that became the largest union of the Orthodox of Ukraine. As of 2021, the UOC had 12,381 parishes, 12,513 priests, 260 monasteries, 4,620 monks, 18 educational institutions, and 4,344 Sunday schools. And this was already in the period of the beginning of persecution, when part of the clergy had broken away from the Church.
From 1992 to 2014 the Ukrainian Orthodox Church was headed by Metropolitan Volodymyr Sabodan – a talented organiser, theologian, composer, and preacher. By the irony of fate, in independent Ukraine the “pro-Moscow” Church was headed by a man whose brother and uncle perished in the ranks of the nationalist Ukrainian Insurgent Army. At the same time the “statist” UOC-KP was headed by Filaret, who for a long period was considered one of the main supporters of maintaining the ties of the Russian Orthodox Church and the general line of the Communist Party.
After the death of Metropolitan Volodymyr (Sabodan) in the summer of 2014, the new Primate of the UOC became Metropolitan Onuphrius (Berezovsky), venerated in the Orthodox world as a renowned ascetic, confessor, and theologian. Without exaggeration, the authority of Metropolitan Onuphrius outside Ukraine is higher than in Ukrainian society, which during the last decade has approached ecclesiastical questions with political measures. Onuphrius is not forgiven for the fact that, when at the very beginning of the war in Donbas in the Verkhovna Rada it was decided to honour the memory of Ukrainian soldiers who perished in battles with the separatists, Onuphrius refused to rise. But there is an explanation for this: for Metropolitan Onuphrius this was a fratricidal conflict in which the spiritual children of his Church fought on both sides of the front line, and he had no moral right to show preference for some faithful of the UOC over other faithful of the UOC. But from that moment the systematic vilification of the Church began.
Up until the events of 2022, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church offered the Ukrainian authorities mediation functions for the resolution of the conflict in Eastern Ukraine: the UOC was the only Church equally represented both in the territory controlled by Kyiv and in the self-proclaimed republics and even in Crimea. The Ukrainian Orthodox Church possessed the necessary instruments for ensuring peaceful dialogue. But, it seems, the authorities were not interested in such dialogue. The experience of pre-war Romania, in which Patriarch Miron succeeded in overcoming the political crisis, or the experience of Cyprus with the political mission of Archbishop Makarios, is illustrative: in both cases the Church played the most important role in political processes. Ukraine missed its chance for arbitration on the part of the Church.
Meanwhile events developed in an unfavourable direction for the UOC. In June 2016 the planned Pan-Orthodox Council in Crete, in which the heads of all 14 world Orthodox Churches were to take part, failed to take place. Because of the conflict between the Patriarchs of Constantinople and Moscow, in Kolymvari in the north of Crete there arrived representatives of only 10 Churches. The entire year 2017 passed under the sign of skirmishes between the two centres of world Orthodoxy – Istanbul and Moscow. The reason was that the Patriarch of Constantinople and Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew renounced the role originally assigned to him by the canons (“first among equals”) and decided de facto to become the “Eastern Pope”, whose decisions would be binding for all other Orthodox Churches. This clearly violated tradition and ecclesiastical canon. The number of those who began to criticise Bartholomew grew.
The actions of Bartholomew could have been recognised as another manifestation of “ecumenical ambitions”, had they not coincided with the interests of the globalists in the United States of America, who saw in the actions of Patriarch Bartholomew an instrument for additional influence upon Russia and its interests. Considering that for Russia’s foreign policy concept the spiritual sphere and spiritual influence play a paramount role, in Washington it was decided to use the factor of the Ecumenical Patriarchate to strike a blow against Russia’s ambitions: it was important to split those spiritual ties which connected Russia with other peoples of Eastern Europe (Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova).
Beginning in 2017, the head of the Commission on International Religious Freedom at the US Department of State was Senator Sam Brownback, former governor of the state of Kansas and candidate for the presidency of the United States in 2007. It is considered that it was precisely Brownback who developed and implemented the plan for the active neutralisation of the spiritual influence of the Russian Orthodox Church on the post-Soviet space. In his activity he enlisted support from the Secretaries of State Rex Tillerson and Mike Pompeo, who promoted the globalist agenda during the first presidential term of Donald Trump. It was precisely Brownback and Patriarch Bartholomew who developed the plan for the creation in Ukraine of a new Church which would be subordinate to the Patriarch of Constantinople.
Patriarch Bartholomew was driven not only by the desire “to restore justice towards the Ukrainians”, but also by a more material question: Ukraine, with its enormous number of believers, church parishes, and monasteries, could become a significant financial source for the Church of Constantinople (under the administration of Patriarch Bartholomew there are about 3,200 parishes throughout the world and 50 monasteries – 4 to 5 times fewer than in the UOC alone).
In April 2018 the President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko suddenly convened a meeting of the National Security and Defence Council of Ukraine – a collegial advisory body – and announced that in negotiations with Patriarch Bartholomew an agreement had been reached on granting Ukraine a tomos (charter) on the creation of a separate Orthodox Church. In reality, it was not Poroshenko who conducted the negotiations on the creation of the new ecclesiastical jurisdiction – he only voiced the result of the agreements of the master of the Phanar (as the residence of the Ecumenical Patriarch in Istanbul is called) with the officials of the US Department of State.
Bartholomew decided to declare illegal the charter (tomos) of his distant predecessor, Patriarch Dionysius, by which the Kyiv Metropolis was subordinated to the Moscow Patriarch. For the creation of the new church, he deliberately violated the 2nd rule of the First Council of Constantinople (381), which prohibits bishops from interfering in the affairs of other local churches.
It is interesting that Patriarch Bartholomew did not at all intend to grant a special status to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kyiv Patriarchate. He began to create a separate jurisdiction, which received the name “The Most Holy Church of Ukraine”. Because of the cacophony of the abbreviation in the Ukrainian language, the Ukrainians themselves call it “The Orthodox Church of Ukraine”. The head of the church, instead of the self-proclaimed “Patriarch” Filaret, was elected the young (39-year-old) and not personally charismatic Metropolitan Epiphanius (Dumenko). It is noteworthy that according to the tomos the new church did not have the right to create dioceses outside Ukraine, although a huge Ukrainian diaspora exists in the world.
Later it became known that, by order of Petro Poroshenko, the Ukrainian side allocated enormous funds, which were transferred directly to the Phanar, and also used for the flights of delegations, the purchase of gifts and other actions. As reported by a number of Ukrainian publications, the material side of the project was supervised by a businessman close to Poroshenko, Oleksandr Petrovskyi, previously known under the surname Nalerkshvili. In 2019, Petrovskyi obtained a court order prohibiting journalists from calling him “a criminal authority nicknamed ‘Alik Narik’ (‘Alik the Druggie’)”.
For Poroshenko it was important to obtain the tomos on the creation of the OCU: in the spring of 2019 presidential elections were to take place, and Poroshenko regarded the success in building the “national church” as one of the elements of his electoral campaign. He was very proud of his achievements in the field of constructing a new (NATO-type) army, in total Ukrainisation, and to this list was added the creation of the “national church”. For the 2019 presidential elections, Poroshenko already ran under the slogan “Army. Language. Faith”.
On 15 December 2018, in Kyiv, the Unification Council of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine was convened. It was planned that the council would unite the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kyiv Patriarchate, the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church, and the greater part of the episcopate of the UOC. The Security Service of Ukraine organised real pressure on a number of metropolitans and bishops of the UOC, whom they tried to force to join the unification process. Thus, in December 2018, the UOC issued a statement that the SBU had tried to kidnap Metropolitan Agapit (Bevtsyk) of Mohyliv-Podilskyi and Sharhorod.
In Ukraine, the new church initiated by Bartholomew and Brownback was very often compared with the Renovationist Church, which existed in the USSR in the 1920s-1930s. The Renovationists were closely connected with the secular power of the Bolsheviks, and in their churches they hung portraits of Lenin and Trotsky alongside icons. In the OCU also, secular political motives (national symbolism, ethnic décor) sometimes dominated over the sacred religious essence. As with the OCU in 2018, the Renovationist Church in the 1920s received tomos from the Ecumenical Patriarch. In 1946 the tomos was revoked, and the church was liquidated.
It is noteworthy that even at the stage of initiating the tomos, Patriarch Bartholomew promised “not to offend Onuphrius” – in his interpretation, the tomos and the new ecclesiastical jurisdiction would not affect the interests of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. Let us recall that Metropolitan Onuphrius, the head of the UOC, enjoyed great authority in the ecclesiastical world. However, Bartholomew did not fulfil his promise.
The tomos and the defection from the UOC in favour of the “national church” did not help Petro Poroshenko. He lost the election, receiving the support of only 25% of voters. The new president, Volodymyr Zelensky, at the very beginning of his presidency, seemed completely distant from religious matters. Zelensky’s parents are Jews, and he himself is rather an atheist by conviction.
Immediately after being elected president, Zelensky visited Istanbul, but refused to sign any additional agreements with Patriarch Bartholomew. The first meeting between Zelensky and Bartholomew was very cold.
Moreover, there were many people in Zelensky’s circle who belonged to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church – in particular, the first deputy head of the Office of the President Serhii Trofimov, the head of the Security Service of Ukraine and Zelensky’s childhood friend Ivan Bakanov, and other figures. There is information that in the summer of 2019, having met with Metropolitan Onuphrius in the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra, Zelensky was moved by the reception and the conversation and even promised to accept Orthodoxy. But he too did not fulfil his promise.
The situation changed after Andrii Yermak became the head of the Office of the President in the spring of 2020 – today he is the second most important person in the state. Yermak, known for his orientation towards the United Kingdom, his great love for the Vatican (it is said that he belongs to the Neocatechumenal Way, though we lack documentary confirmation of this fact), and his complete intolerance towards the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, achieved that Zelensky in fact took the same position regarding the UOC as Poroshenko. And most likely this position was dictated not by the interests of Ukraine, but by the conditions of Ukraine’s Western partners. Supporters of the UOC were expelled from the Office of the President. The attempt by the hierarchs of the UOC to meet with Zelensky in order to reach mutual understanding was unsuccessful – the president refused to receive Metropolitan Onuphrius and his closest associates.
With the beginning of the aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church condemned the very fact of the invasion. Metropolitan Onuphrius accused President Vladimir Putin of “the sin of Cain”. The Ukrainian Orthodox Church declared its disassociation from the Russian Orthodox Church.
For the Ukrainian authorities this was not enough. The course was set on the complete destruction and absorption of the UOC by the “national church”. All the more so as such demands were entirely in line with the Ecumenical Patriarch and the globalists (on whom Zelensky relies). At a certain stage Bartholomew no longer promoted the interests of the OCU – he no longer concealed that he was interested in ensuring that the Kyiv-Pechersk and Pochaiv Lavras, as well as a number of the most important churches and monasteries, passed under the direct administration (stauropegion) of the Patriarchate of Constantinople.
From the second half of 2022, a real campaign of persecution and falsehood was unleashed against the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. On the basis of isolated cases of cooperation between priests and laity of the UOC and the Russian occupation forces, Ukrainian official propaganda declared the entire church criminals and collaborators.
In the autumn of 2022, the SBU conducted searches in a number of churches and monasteries. It is interesting that as proof of anti-Ukrainian activity or of working for the aggressor, even books printed in Moscow 20 years ago, rare editions of Soviet newspapers, or a Bible bearing the inscription “Printed with the blessing of Patriarch Kirill” were cited. The absurdity of such evidence is obvious, but it was sufficient to arouse a wave of hatred among nationalistically inclined citizens.
The persecution of the church in Ukraine was carried out according to the same scenario as that by which “Free Radio Television of the Thousand Hills” in Rwanda in 1994 incited hatred against the Tutsi people. How that ended is well known. In the conditions of war with Russia, Volodymyr Zelensky in every way provoked an internal religious conflict. The motive remains unclear. All the more so, as a huge number of believers of the UOC served in the active army, and discrimination on religious grounds could hardly contribute to raising morale and discipline. Representatives of the UOC were denied the right to send their priests as chaplains to the Armed Forces of Ukraine (thus the faithful of the UOC were deprived of the right to the sacraments).
Meanwhile, Russia and its propaganda machine maximally exploited the facts of persecution of the UOC to strengthen its own position in the occupied territories and to justify its own aggressive actions in Ukraine. Each such case was used against Zelensky and his team, and also as an example of the systematic violation of civil liberties and human rights.
Across Ukraine there swept a campaign of seizure of churches belonging to the UOC. Everything was presented as a “people’s initiative”, yet everywhere events took place according to the same scenario – an initiative group, headed by representatives of the local authorities and reinforced by representatives of the security services and “athletic-looking men”, would gather. They seized the church, presenting themselves as “parishioners”, and held a vote for the transfer of the church to the new ecclesiastical jurisdiction. In Lviv, the seizure of one of the churches was personally directed by the head of the regional state administration, and the mayor of Lviv directed the destruction of another UOC church.
A wave of arrests of the clergy swept across the country. The abbot of the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra, Metropolitan Pavlo (Lebid), the well-known spiritual composer and respected theologian Metropolitan Ionafan (Yeletskykh) of Bratslav and Tulchyn, and the abbot of the Sviatohirsk Monastery, Metropolitan Arsenii (Yakovenko), were arrested. The grounds were sometimes more than contrived: for example, Metropolitan Arsenii in his sermon thanked the parishioners for coming to the church at Easter, although there were army checkpoints on all the roads to the monastery. The very fact of mentioning the presence of checkpoints gave grounds to accuse the metropolitan of disclosing information on troop deployment and of working for the enemy.
As a result of such actions: Metropolitan Ionafan, a 76-year-old elder practically confined to a wheelchair, was deprived of Ukrainian citizenship and sent to Russia in an exchange. Metropolitan Arsenii, a man who has had part of his stomach removed and suffers from numerous illnesses, has been under investigation for two years, and his guilt has not been proven. Metropolitan Longin (Zhar) of Bancheny, a Hero of Ukraine who adopted and raised more than 500 children with disabilities and developmental problems, was driven to a massive heart attack. The list could go on.
An important point: the law under which priests are granted deferment from mobilisation does not apply to the UOC. It is the only church whose clergy cannot be exempt from mobilisation. That is why almost throughout Ukraine there is a hunt for priests of the UOC, who are sent to assault brigades. Or else to prison – for refusing mobilisation (up to 10 years of imprisonment according to the Criminal Code of Ukraine).
Sanctions, and later criminal cases, were initiated against the main patron of the UOC, billionaire Vadym Novynskyi. His business suffered a devastating blow. Transactions under which his assets were transferred into trust of a well-known Cypriot company, executed on the basis of European Union legislation, were declared invalid – with the grossest violation of all legal norms. Novynskyi himself (at the very beginning of the war, at Zelensky’s request, performing delicate tasks of establishing contact with Russia and forming a group for the first Ukrainian-Russian negotiations) was forced to leave Ukraine and now lives in Europe.
In the spring of 2024, the authorities in Ukraine decided to take away from the UOC its principal shrine – the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra. By decision of the Ministry of Culture of Ukraine, the representatives of canonical Orthodoxy were deprived of the churches located on the territory of the Lavra, and later the question of the eviction of the monks was raised. The underground sepulchres in which the mummified remains of the Pechersk saints rested were also sealed. Later a very strange commission was organised, which included, among others, veterinarians (for some reason), but representatives of the UOC were not invited. The purpose of the commission was to examine the relics of the saints. The expulsion of the UOC from its sacred sites was accompanied by flash mobs of militant opponents of the church, and in some seized churches rock concerts and culinary shows were soon organised. However, these facts were widely covered in the mass media – and the official authorities in Kyiv presented this as a manifestation of progress.
On 21 August 2024, Zelensky initiated the adoption of anti-church legislation: in effect, the Verkhovna Rada outlawed the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC). On 17 August, the Speaker of the Rada, Ruslan Stefanchuk, stated: “The Russian Church in Ukraine (UOC) will be banned; the draft law provides for its immediate prohibition.” On the day of the vote on the law, Volodymyr Zelensky pathetically proclaimed: “A law on our spiritual independence has been adopted. This is what we discussed with members of the Council of Churches and Religious Organisations. And in the coming days, I will speak with representatives of the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew. We shall continue to strengthen Ukraine, our society.”
The UOC was demanded to dissociate itself from the Russian Orthodox Church (which the Church had already done in the first days of the war). Yet the state structures decided to appeal not to the documents of the UOC, but to those of the Russian Orthodox Church (which is absurd, as Russian documents are not recognised in Ukraine). It was precisely on the internal documentation of the Russian Orthodox Church that the authorities began to build new persecutions of representatives of Ukrainian Orthodoxy.
The excessive zeal of the persecutors of the UOC was noticed even beyond Ukraine’s borders. Vice President J. D. Vance became the first foreign politician to speak out in defence of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, declaring that persecution was unacceptable. This did not greatly affect the situation – the authorities demanded the complete “demoscowisation” of Ukraine.
In October 2024, a crowd of armed men seized the cathedral in Cherkasy. The seizure was de facto sanctioned and supported by the mayor of Cherkasy. A series of new seizures swept through the regional centres of Ukraine. Yet in June 2025, the residents of Chernivtsi in Western Ukraine managed to organise themselves and defend their cathedral, which had been seized by people in military uniform who had first brought into the church a group of militants disguised as wounded men in wheelchairs. Once inside the church, the “disabled” quickly leapt from their wheelchairs and began the seizure of the building. However, the residents of Chernivtsi were able to repel the raiders. This was the first instance of victory over the temple invaders and the first defeat of the authorities in the prolonged confrontation between the government and the Church.
On 2 July 2025, Volodymyr Zelensky deprived the Primate of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, Metropolitan Onufriy (Berezovsky), of Ukrainian citizenship – allegedly because he possessed citizenship of the Russian Federation. Metropolitan Onufriy repeatedly explained that he had received Russian citizenship automatically at the dissolution of the USSR, as he was residing in Russia at that time. In the 1990s, when Onufriy obtained Ukrainian citizenship, the Ukrainian citizenship law was not yet in force, and therefore no one required him to renounce Russian citizenship. This legal inconsistency was not taken into account by Zelensky – the head of the UOC was deprived of Ukrainian citizenship under an entirely formal pretext. Yet it was clear that Zelensky was taking revenge on the UOC for the failure of presidential policy in Chernivtsi (the birthplace of Onufriy and the place of his episcopal activity).
On 1 October 2025, the 90-day period during which stateless persons may remain on the territory of Ukraine expired. Metropolitan Onufriy found himself in a precarious situation. He may be deported from Ukraine at any moment (such cases have already occurred). However, the authorities fear that this would provoke an unhealthy public reaction: with Zelensky’s declining popularity, such actions could once again lead to an increase in support for the UOC, which the authorities cannot allow.
In August, a religious procession took place to the Pochaiv Lavra in Western Ukraine, which gathered tens of thousands of people who were unafraid of possible persecution. Among the participants of the procession were many war veterans. Most of the participants came from Western Ukraine, where the UOC had not previously enjoyed a high level of support. It is evident that in the more eastern regions, the level of support for the UOC is even higher.
Furthermore, on 1 May 2025, a new Religious Liberty Commission was established under the United States Department of State. Considering that this commission actively monitors all manifestations of persecution on religious grounds, the authorities in Kyiv also decided not to rush into a new wave of anti-church actions.
In September 2025, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew paid a ten-day visit to Washington. Experts say that the Patriarch was received rather coolly at the White House. He spoke for about 30 minutes with President Trump on general topics. Then there was a meeting with Vice President Vance, during which Bartholomew was asked many uncomfortable questions – including concerning Ukraine. In any case, it became evident that Washington was not enthusiastic about the policy unfolding in Ukraine around the Church issue. It was for this reason that hope appeared that in the matter of the UOC there might either be some relaxation or that Zelensky might be advised to “freeze” the process indefinitely.
The history of pressure on the Ukrainian Orthodox Church continues. And to us, European analysts, the position of the Ukrainian authorities is absolutely incomprehensible – those who, having such a cruel and harsh enemy in the east, instead of consolidating society, begin to seek new lines of internal confrontation within Ukraine. The appeal to the idea that the UOC is the “fifth column” of Russia is clearly contrived and serves only a propagandistic purpose. Experience shows that the parishioners and clergy of the UOC are, for the most part, patriots, but first and foremost – Christians who honour the canons and traditions. Why intrigue and pettiness have come to the fore in years of severe trials – this, perhaps, historians will one day tell us.
At present, there is an obvious point: the situation in Ukraine requires focusing efforts on the defence of the state, not on a “witch-hunt” in the religious sphere.
In the preparation of this work, materials from the media were used, as well as personal communication with representatives of the expert community, journalists, and clergy from Ukraine.
