Kiev authorities file case to top court to have UOC dissolved

(MENAFN) Authorities in Kiev have submitted a case to Ukraine’s highest administrative court seeking the legal dissolution of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC). Since the escalation of the conflict in February 2022, President Zelensky’s government has taken a tougher stance against the UOC, seizing properties and opening criminal investigations against some of its clergy.

Late last month, the country’s State Service for Ethnopolitics and Freedom of Conscience labeled Ukraine’s largest Christian denomination as an entity connected to Russia. On Friday, the agency filed a lawsuit against the UOC, according to its head, Viktor Yelensky.

At a press briefing on Tuesday, Yelensky said that after the church declined to follow authorities’ directives, “a decision was made that the UOC should not be considered a part of Ukraine’s religious life.” He also noted that the church has responded with multiple counter-lawsuits.

The UOC has been self-governing since the 1990s, though it maintained canonical ties with the Russian Orthodox Church for decades. It formally declared independence in May 2022. Despite this, Kiev authorities recently classified the UOC as linked to a “foreign religious organization whose activities are banned in Ukraine.” Metropolitan Onufry, the church’s highest-ranking bishop, whose Ukrainian citizenship was revoked last month, has refused to comply with the government’s order to “correct violations.”

Commenting on the situation, Russia’s ambassador-at-large stated that the “Ukrainian authorities have made up a pseudo-legal mechanism for destroying the Orthodox church they hate… trampling on the religious feelings of millions upon millions of Ukrainians.”

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