Even though there have been multiple allegations of clergymen from the Russian Orthodox Church acting as agents for Moscow, and there are long-lasting links between its local leadership and the notorious Russian Patriarch Kirill, a close ally of Vladimir Putin who describes Russia’s invasion as a battle against sin, it had continued operating across Ukraine until the August 20 decision.
The fact that the ban took two and a half years to be agreed upon demonstrates the difficulties of finding agreement on a highly contentious political intrusion into the area of personal faith. The ban applies to both the Russian Orthodox and the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate (which is considered to be an affiliate of the former, although it denies this and says it has separated from Russia.)
The legislation prohibits the work of all Russian-linked religious organizations. The Moscow Patriarchate parishes in Ukraine will have nine months to fully cut ties with their Moscow-based mother church. The law also gives state authorities the authority to act against religious organizations unable or unwilling to comply with the law.
Ukraine was only granted autocephaly (autonomy) for its Orthodox Church in 2019 by the Patriarch of Constantinople, leading to the creation of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church (UAOC.) Since the full-scale invasion, more than 600 churches have transferred from the Patriarchate of Moscow to the UAOC, but more than 8,000 remain under Russian Orthodox control.
The case against the Russian Orthodox Church is lengthy. It has “long used [the church] as an arm of the state” according to investigative journalists Irina Borogan and Andrei Soldatov. That has meant the extensive misuse of clergymen for intelligence and subversion work that even involved the employment of Kirill himself as an informer in the 1970s and 1980s, according to KGB files briefly opened to researchers in the 1990s.
In occupied regions, there have been documented cases of representatives of the ROC in Ukraine passing troop locations to Russian forces, openly supporting the occupation and even enabling torture, according to the investigative site, Bihus Info. In one case a priest from the Kyiv region collaborated with the aggressors during the occupation of his area in 2022, providing information about Ukrainian patriots and keeping volunteers in the basement of his church.
Raids on Church offices by Ukrainian security forces have uncovered unregistered Russian citizens living in Ukraine, a significant amount of cash, pro-Russian literature for use in seminaries, and several people without any legal documents. Polls show 82% of Ukrainians distrust Russian-linked churches.
That said, it is clear that its worshippers are not all anti-Ukrainian traitors. Many have attended the same church with the same priest for decades, and it can be psychologically difficult to change.
Some Russian Orthodox priests, for example, are introducing the Ukrainian language for religious services to engage more young people in prayer, according to research by the Berlin-based Center for East European and International Studies.
And while some parishioners have expressed strong pro-Russian sentiments, others “do not deny Russian aggression but believe there should be one church [for Russians and Ukrainians],” the researchers found.
The prohibition will not halt the church’s activities in any case, according to Yaroslav Bozhko, a spokesman for the Yellow Ribbon resistance movement. The thousands of Moscow Patriarchate parishes are registered as separate legal entities with no direct connection to Moscow or the Russian Orthodox Church, he said, meaning enforcement would be a bureaucratic minefield.
The term “ties” in the legislation is vague; thus, there is a risk that a legal ban may prove ineffective; it may backfire by provoking anger among ROC parishioners loyal to Ukraine. It is also almost guaranteed to be used by Russian disinformation channels and their foreign helpers to suggest that Ukraine opposes religious freedoms.
The situation is complex and there are good reasons to act against those in the churches who assist Russia’s war to eradicate Ukraine as an independent state. But whether this legislation takes the right approach or whether something more carefully targeted was needed is another matter.
Mykyta Vorobiov is a Ukrainian political adviser, journalist, and political science student at Bard College Berlin. For the last two years, he has been developing articles on politics and law for CEPA, VoxEurop, JURIST, and others.
Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions expressed on Europe’s Edge are those of the author alone and may not represent those of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis. CEPA maintains a strict intellectual independence policy across all its projects and publications.
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