Ukrainian lawmakers voted on Tuesday to ban the Ukrainian Orthodox Church as part of Kyiv’s ongoing efforts to cut religious, social, and institutional ties with entities perceived to be aligned with Moscow.
Ukraine has been working for years to distance itself from Russian religious influence, a process that intensified following Moscow’s 2022 invasion, which was backed by the powerful Russian Orthodox Church.
On Tuesday, 265 members of Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada voted to pass legislation banning religious organizations suspected of having ties to Russia, including the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. The bill required 226 votes to pass in the 450-seat parliament. Forty-nine seats remain vacant due to Russia’s occupation of eastern Ukrainian regions and the departure or removal of some lawmakers.
The vote was welcomed by President Volodymyr Zelensky’s office. “There will be no Moscow Church in Ukraine,” Andriy Yermak, Zelensky’s chief of staff, stated on Telegram. The bill now awaits Zelensky’s signature to become law.
First Deputy Chairwoman of the Verkhovna Rada, Iryna Herashchenko, hailed the vote as “historic” and a crucial “matter of national security.”
The Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which formally broke ties with the Russian Orthodox Church in 2022, has faced accusations from some lawmakers of maintaining covert connections with Russian clergy despite the ongoing conflict.
In 2019, the Istanbul-based leader of the Eastern Orthodox Church granted religious independence to the Orthodox Church of Ukraine — a breakaway faction from the Moscow Patriarchate. The split was spurred by Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the subsequent conflict between Kyiv and Moscow-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine.
Despite the schism, many parishes and worshippers continued to follow the church suspected of links to Moscow.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova condemned Tuesday’s vote, accusing Ukraine of attempting to “destroy true Orthodoxy.”
