KYIV — Ukraine’s parliament on Tuesday passed a bill banning the activities of religious organizations that have ties with Russia.
The bill, which must be signed into law by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, would provide legal grounds to ban the Moscow-linked Ukrainian Orthodox Church.
“Historic voting. Today we have embarked on the inevitable path of cleansing from the inside of the Kremlin’s agent network, which for decades hid behind the mask of a religious organization,” independent Ukrainian MP Roman Lozynskyi said in a post on Facebook.
The Ukrainian Orthodox Church and the Orthodox Church of Ukraine are locked in a battle over legitimacy, with the former seen as being loyal to the Russian branch of Orthodox Christianity, while the latter is subject to the patriarchy of Istanbul.
Even though the Ukrainian Orthodox Church claimed it cut ties back in 2022 with Russia’s Patriarch Kirill, who blessed the Russian invasion of Ukraine, its priests and financial backers were caught aiding the Russian army in Ukraine. It also hired top lobbyists in the U.S. to claim the upcoming ban amounted to religious persecution and called to stall aid to Ukraine until it stops “persecuting” Christians.
However, the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, as well as members of the Ukrainian Council of Churches and Religious Organizations, supported the bill and claimed religious freedoms are safe in Ukraine even during the war.
“The Moscow Patriarchate justifies pogroms and restrictions on religious freedom, torture and murders of priests and pastors, and cynically tramples on God’s instructions and basic norms of universal morality,” the council said in a statement on Saturday.
The newly passed bill does not ban any church right away.
Thirty days after it is signed by the president and published, the State Ethnopolitics Service of Ukraine will have the opportunity to check Ukrainian religious organizations for affiliation with the Moscow Church, Ukrainian MP Volodymyr Viatrovych, from the European Solidarity Party, said.
“If at least one of the 5 legally defined signs of a religious organization’s connection with the Russian Orthodox Church is discovered, such an organization will receive an order to eliminate this connection within 30 days,” Viatrovych said.
“If the connection with Moscow is not severed, the state will apply to the court for a ban on such an organization. Legal proceedings for the ban will begin 9 months after the publication of the law,” the lawmaker added.