Ukraine: from Christianity to a national religion?
The authorities are creating a pantheon in the Lavra, reburying the bodies of national heroes, and staging ceremonies with pagan undertones. What is this? Let us try to make sense of it.
Do you remember how, as a presidential candidate, V. Zelensky criticized P. Poroshenko for his church policy and the "tomos tour"? Do you remember how, immediately after winning the election, Zelensky ostentatiously distanced himself from public religiosity: "Don't look for me in church. Look for God!"? Now everything is the exact opposite. The authorities are paying a great deal of attention to sacred themes. The picture that emerges is a grim one: on the one hand, persecution of the UOC and attempts to ban it; on the other — the creation of a national pantheon, the preparation of a law on national shrines, lavish ceremonies involving the remains of highly controversial historical figures, and the use of mysteries that clearly resemble pagan rites.
Contemporary Ukrainian mysteries
In August 2026, the remains of OUN founder Yevhen Konovalets were returned to Ukraine after 88 years in Rotterdam. On 11 August they were exhumed at the Crooswijk cemetery, and on 13 August they were brought to Ukraine. The coffin was then taken to Kyiv, to the main cathedral of the UGCC.
What followed clearly went beyond the bounds of Christian burial traditions. At night, a restored Austin armored car from the era of the Ukrainian Revolution drove up to the UGCC cathedral. A coffin rested on a gun carriage. Beside it stood a three-inch cannon from 1917. Soldiers holding torches lined the road, and fire bowls burned.
The Third Army Corps itself called this ceremony a "mystery of continuity". The fire symbolized the passing of the struggle from previous generations of the Ukrainian nationalist movement to the present-day military. And then, beside the doors of a Christian church, the soldiers recited the "Prayer of the Ukrainian Nationalist."
The "Prayer of the Ukrainian Nationalist" is one of the core traditions of the 12th Special Purpose Brigade "Azov." But the addressee of the prayer is not God, not Christ, not the Mother of God, and not the saints — it is the nation itself, to which the words "holy," "most holy," and "life-giving" are directed — epithets that in the Christian tradition are reserved exclusively for God or (in a softer form) for the Mother of God.
When the object of veneration and glorification is not God but a this-worldly reality — a people, a nation, a state — this is theologically classified as a form of idolatry.
In this "Prayer," Ukraine is effectively placed in the position of God. And this is not our assessment.
In September 2024, an "Azov" officer and candidate of philosophical sciences, Vladyslav Dutchak, delivered a special lecture at KyivBookFest on the history and meaning of this prayer. His words were: "The nationalist in his prayer addresses not a deity, but the most precious thing he has — Ukraine."
And nothing out of the ordinary happened near the UGCC cathedral. The "Prayer of the Ukrainian Nationalist," accompanied by the light of torches, is recited by members of "Azov" every year during a special annual "Day of the Dead" ceremony. The official website explicitly calls it a "mystery."
This is an overtly pagan rite, borrowed from the rituals of the ancient Scandinavian epic: Azov members burn a drakkar (a Viking longship — Ed.), in which the fallen symbolically depart to Valhalla (in ancient Scandinavian pagan mythology — the realm of the dead, where warriors slain in battle go — Ed.). During the recitation of the "Prayer," participants in the mystery use the symbol Tiwaz/Tyr (ᛏ) — an ancient Scandinavian rune associated with the god Tyr — and also raise a burial mound, at the top of which a sword thrust into the earth is placed; experts interpret this as a symbol of worship of the Scythian god of war, to whom, according to Herodotus, the Scythians offered human sacrifices.
And somewhat earlier, in 2017, the "Prayer of the Ukrainian Nationalist" was recited at the base of the "Azov" regiment in Urзуф during a rite of worship of the ancient Slavic god Perun, whom regiment members called the "primordial ancestor" and protector of the garrison. The press service reported that this "sacred place" would subsequently be used for the blessing of weapons before combat missions.
On 18 August 2026, the remains of OUN founder Yevhen Konovalets were reinterred at the National Military Memorial Cemetery. The memorial service was conducted by the head of the UGCC, Sviatoslav Shevchuk.
What is the role of the UGCC?
The ceremonial celebrations surrounding Ye. Konovalets took place in the main church of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, and for this reason the question of the pagan forms of those celebrations is a particularly acute one.
A prayer addressed not to Christ but to Ukraine, fiery "mysteries of continuity," the touching of flags to Konovalets's remains for a blessing — all of this took place within the context of a Greek Catholic church service. How compatible is any of this with the Christian tradition?
During the memorial service for Konovalets on 16 August 2026, the head of the UGCC, Sviatoslav Shevchuk, called on those present to pray to the Lord for "the forgiveness of his sins." But this only makes the contrast all the more striking: inside the church, prayers are offered to God that He might forgive the deceased man his sins, while alongside this another "prayer" is heard in which Ukraine itself is called Most Holy, and contemporary military banners receive a "symbolic blessing" from Konovalets's remains to continue the struggle. In other words, Konovalets here appears as part of the deity "Ukraine" and himself becomes an object of veneration.
Occultism or the sacralization of politics?
And the current actions of the authorities to sacralize the Ukrainian nation, combined with the simultaneous persecution of the Church, cannot fail to raise questions. After all, the plans to bury national heroes in the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra prompt only one thought — that the intention is to replace, in the minds of the people, the Venerable Fathers of the Caves and other saints of the Church with these figures. But how could the idea of such a substitution have arisen in the first place? Who could have initiated it?
The inner circle of Zelensky has more than once been accused of an interest in occult practices. The most substantial confirmation came in May 2026, when a SAP prosecutor read aloud in court the correspondence of Andrii Yermak with a certain female astrologer, saved in his phone as "Veronika Fenshui Ofis" (Veronika Feng Shui Office): judging by the correspondence, Yermak consulted her in connection with personnel decisions regarding appointments to senior state positions.
This gave some bloggers grounds to claim that state decisions in Ukraine are being made by fortune-tellers and sorcerers. To this are added less substantiated but widely resonant stories: former presidential press secretary Yuliia Mendel claimed that Yermak's circle invited "mages" from Israel, Georgia, and Latin America and practiced rituals in cemeteries, while during the construction of the "Dynastiia" complex associated with that circle, some sources allege that sand taken from a cemetery was used.
Of course, all of this is fairly scattered information, on the basis of which no unambiguous conclusions can yet be drawn, but the picture that emerges is at the very least alarming.
We will not assert that the authorities are consciously transforming Christian Ukraine into something semi-pagan or occult — there is still insufficient factual evidence for that. But the picture that has already taken shape in our country today allows us to conclude that there is a deliberate sacralization of state policy underway.
Emilio Gentile: the sacralization of politics
One of the leading scholars who have studied the phenomenon of the sacralization of politics is the Italian historian Emilio Gentile. In 2003 he received the Hans Sigrist Prize from the University of Bern, and his most well-known book on this subject is entitled Politics as Religion.
Gentile argues that politics is capable of acquiring a religious dimension even without belief in God: the object of sacralization can be an entirely earthly reality — a nation, a state, a party, a class. Around this reality, myths about the past are constructed, heroes emerge, obligatory texts, symbols, and rituals are created, and loyalty to it becomes a moral absolute for the sake of which a person is prepared to sacrifice both himself and others.
If one looks at the examples of various mysteries and ideologies cited above from this perspective, everything falls into place. According to Gentile, prayers, rituals, and the cult of heroes are merely the beginning of a process that gradually passes through several stages: sacralized symbols cease to coexist with other values and begin to displace them; the sacralized community becomes the measure of good and evil, and disagreement with it is transformed from a differing point of view into heresy — and then the dissenter becomes an enemy of the people and an apostate; the state moves from governing citizens to shaping the "right kind of person" through obligatory myths and rituals, and any doubt about the sacred nature of the nation is harshly persecuted.
At its apex, such a political religion begins to sacralize violence as well: struggle, war, and self-sacrifice become not a tragic necessity but a means of "moral purification" and the regeneration of the community.
Conclusion: political religion and the Church
At the same time, such a political religion does not necessarily have to destroy churches. According to Gentile, it can coexist with historical religion by incorporating it into its own mythological system and assigning it a subordinate, auxiliary role. The Church remains useful as an institution that participates in the glorification of heroes the state requires, supports the national myth, and observes the rituals. It appears that such a role suits the UGCC and the OCU quite well.
But this also reveals one of the reasons why the UOC so stubbornly resists the authorities' attempts to impose their demands upon it and reshape it in their own image. For this could ultimately lead to the UOC being compelled to agree to become an instrument for affirming and sacralizing current state policy: to agree that Ukraine will be placed in the position of Christ, that instead of the Ten Commandments of the Bible people will live according to the Nationalists' Decalogue, and so on.
A Christian can be a law-abiding citizen of his country, but he cannot render religious worship to anyone other than God. The words of Christ are uncompromising on this point: "You shall worship the Lord your God, and Him only shall you serve" (Mt. 4:10).
