Ukrainian Council of Churches gives full support to ban on Russian church in Ukraine

The Ukrainian Council of Churches and Religious Organizations (UCCRO) has released an official statement to support the ban on pro-Russian religious organizations in Ukraine, including the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate.

“We support the legislative initiative of the President of Ukraine to make it impossible for such organizations to operate in our country, which also has broad political and public support,” the statement reads.

UCCRO categorically condemned the activities of the Russian Orthodox Church, which “has become an accomplice to the Russian invaders’ bloody crimes against humanity, which sanctifies weapons of mass destruction and openly declares the need to destroy Ukrainian statehood, culture, identity, and, more recently, Ukrainians themselves.”

No organization – whether religious or secular – that has its center in a country that has committed military aggression against the Ukrainian people and is controlled by the aggressor state can operate in Ukraine, the clergy declared.

“The main threat to religious freedom in Ukraine is the Russian aggression, as a result of which dozens of clergymen were killed by the occupiers and hundreds of churches and houses of worship were destroyed. 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 statement continued.

A focus on protecting the values of religious freedom and Ukraine’s spiritual independence will consolidate society towards victory and to establish the long-awaited just peace, UCCRO concluded.

In March, Russian People’s Council, an organization under the auspices of the Russian Orthodox Church, declared full-scale invasion of Ukraine a “holy war”. The so-called “decree” was approved under the leadership of Moscow Patriarch Kirill.