(Kyiv) The Ukrainian parliament voted on Tuesday in the final reading a bill providing for the banning of the Orthodox Church linked to the Moscow Patriarchate, often considered a relay of influence for the Kremlin, after two and a half years of Russian invasion of Ukraine.
A “historic” decision according to Ukrainian deputies and immediately denounced by Russia, but which is also largely symbolic, because its implementation risks taking months, even years.
“A law on our spiritual independence has been adopted,” President Volodymyr Zelensky, who initiated the measure, said on social media.
“Historic decision! The parliament voted for a bill that bans a branch of the aggressor country in Ukraine,” wrote opposition MP Iryna Gerashchenko on Telegram.
The church affected by the decision was once the most popular in Ukraine, a country where the vast majority of people are Orthodox. But it has lost many followers in recent years as Ukrainian national sentiment has gained popularity in the face of the former dominant power Russia.
This process was accelerated with the creation in 2018 of an independent Ukrainian Orthodox Church, and then, even more so, with the start in February 2022 of the Russian offensive in Ukraine, openly supported by Russian Patriarch Kirill.
The branch that depended on the Moscow Patriarchate broke off relations with the latter a few months later, in May 2022. However, the Ukrainian authorities consider that it is still under Russian influence and have increased the number of legal measures against it.
According to the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), more than 100 priests of this Church have been subjected to criminal proceedings since 2022, 26 of whom have been convicted by the courts.
Moscow’s anger
Media reports say that the Russian-linked Church still has some 9,000 parishes in Ukraine, compared to 8,000 to 9,000 for its independent rival.
The new law opens the possibility of eventually banning dioceses and parishes in Ukraine from the former.
His vote is part of Kyiv’s policy of ending more than 300 years of Russian religious tutelage, which has intensified since Moscow’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula in 2014, followed by the armed conflict in Donbass (eastern Ukraine) instigated by Russia a decade ago.
The text adopted in first reading last October was voted on Tuesday by 265 deputies, the minimum required being 226.
However, his path in parliament has not been easy, due, according to opposition media, to deputies considered pro-Russian, but also to some of their colleagues from the presidential party, who are reluctant.
Unsurprisingly, Russia immediately denounced the measure.
“This is an illegal act that constitutes the most flagrant violation of the fundamental principles of freedom of conscience and human rights,” Russian Orthodox Church spokesman Vladimir Legoida accused on Telegram.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova denounced the decision as being aimed at “destroying canonical and true Orthodoxy and replacing it with a substitute, a false Church.”
Influence in decline
According to media reports, the implementation of this law may take a long time, as the ban on each parish or diocese must be ratified by a court.
In front of the famous Kyiv Caves Lavra monastery, where the church once had its headquarters and where several dozen of its monks still live, a handful of faithful were praying on Tuesday under a blazing sun.
One woman among them, Svetlana, admits to being worried about the ban. “I was baptized and married in this church,” she explains.
“If the church closes, people will continue to pray in the streets, maybe we will set up tents,” adds the 56-year-old worshipper.
Igor, a 21-year-old musician, disagrees. “I fully support this ban,” he says, accusing the church of being a de facto “special service of the Kremlin.”
According to a 2023 poll by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology, 66% of Ukrainians were in favor of banning the Moscow-linked church.
Moreover, 54% of Ukrainians identified with the independent Church and only 4% with the one subject to the Russian Patriarchate, according to an opinion survey carried out by the same organization in 2022, compared to 42% and 18% respectively the previous year.