Written by Anastasia Ratieieva, UCMC analyst
The Ukrainian parliament recently passed the Law “On the Protection of the Constitutional Order in the Field of Religious Organizations,” which prohibits Russian-affiliated religious organizations from conducting activities on Ukrainian territory. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy signed the document on Independence Day, emphasizing its importance to Ukrainian spiritual culture.
The law is designed to protect Ukraine’s national security and sovereignty in the face of Moscow’s aggression. The document forbids the activities of religious organizations with an administrative or spiritual center in the aggressor country. The main reason for this decision is concern that these organizations will be used to spread Russian propaganda, influence sociopolitical processes, and destabilize the situation in Ukraine. As a result of SBU inspections of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine dioceses (Moscow Patriarchate), numerous evidence of this influence were discovered on church grounds, particularly the distribution of printed materials with anti-Ukrainian narratives and Russian symbols.
The key provisions of the law are:
- Activities of religious organizations with governing bodies subordinated to Russian religious centers are prohibited.
- Liability for violating the ban, which may result in criminal sanctions.
- The possibility of transferring property from banned religious organizations to state ownership.
Following the law’s adoption, a specially authorized body will conduct inspections of individual parishes for ties to Russia. The law allows religious experts to examine organizations’ subordination to Russian centers of influence. If violations are discovered, religious organizations (each parish, diocese, and further down the church-administrative hierarchy) will be given orders to stop them. If the organization fails to meet the deadline for fulfilling the order, it will face an administrative court action to halt its operations. It is critical to understand that the law refers to religious organizations as distinct legal entities (e.g., church communities), not the entire UOC-MP.
According to Archimandrite Kyrylo Hovorun, the new law’s goal is to encourage the UOC to determine its canonical status: “The UOC is currently in a gray area. It does not correspond to any of the Orthodox Church’s defined canonical statuses. It is not autocephalous, autonomous, or simply part of the ROC. And what the state is currently doing is assisting the UOC in determining who they are.”
- Kremlin propaganda about the new law accuses Ukraine of restricting religious freedom. Fake news claims that the law will lead to physical persecution of believers.
Old Eddie, anonymous telegram channel, 634,000:
“The ban on the canonical Church in Ukraine is only the first step. Next, they will begin to punish for the revealed affiliation with the canonical Church, as it was under the Bolsheviks.”
- Distortion of actual legal facts. At the state level, the Russian Federation describes the Ukrainian parliament’s decision as “the destruction of Orthodoxy and the church.”
Maria Zakharova, spokesperson for the Russian Foreign Ministry:
“This is destruction. The goal here was to destroy canonical, true Orthodoxy at the root, and instead to bring in a pontoon church, a substitute church, understood in this way by the false church, to create a quasi-Orthodox church.”
- Deepening the tactics of demonizing the opponent. “Satanists,” ‘Nazis,’ and ‘apostates’ are just a few examples of the epithets used by Russian propaganda in an attempt to devalue the decisions of the Ukrainian authorities.
Mikhail Smolin, pro-Kremlin historian:
“Like godfighters, Ukrainian human material is degrading politically. Terrorism as a military tactic and Nazi ideology as a worldview are fundamentally rooted in the political practice of the Kyiv regime.”
- Calls for revenge and threats. It is expected that the Kremlin will use any news from Ukraine to strengthen public support for the “SMO” and its own criminal actions, which will then be referred to as “God’s punishment.”
Dmitry Medvedev, Telegram channel, 1,300,000:
“This story will not go in vain for Ukraine. The country will be annihilated just as Sodom and Gomorrah were, and the demons will inevitably fall. And the reckoning will not come in the distant future, after they have passed into the next world. On the contrary, the punishment will be earthly, cruel, and painful, and it will come soon.”
- Involving “experts” from various fields to strengthen propaganda. Russian media publishes statements from historians, religious scholars, and religious leaders who play along with the Kremlin’s rhetoric.
Vladimir Legoyda, representative of the Russian Orthodox Church:
“The implementation of the decision to ban the UOC will lead to acts of mass violence against millions of believers. The adoption of this law creates a legal basis for the total liquidation of parishes of the canonical church in Ukraine.”
Russian political scientists have resorted to manipulative techniques in their attempts to denigrate the actions of the Ukrainian authorities. For example, pro-Kremlin political analyst Sergei Markov came up with a causal link between the law and the Jewish pogroms. Appealing to historical parallels is a classic Russian propaganda tactic. Markov’s statement about the “totalitarian sect of the OCU” and comparisons to ISIS are equally manipulative. The Orthodox Church of Ukraine is a canonical autocephalous church recognized by world Orthodoxy.Its activities are governed by Ukrainian law and do not fit the description of a “totalitarian sect.” In general, political scientist Markov often resorts to historical distortions in his statements with reference to “Western curators of Ukraine.”
Russian propagandists claim that the new law “provides an opportunity to launch anti-church persecution” and “destroys freedom of religion.” In fact, the law does not prohibit praying or attending church. Its purpose is to limit Russia’s ability to influence Ukrainian society through religious institutions. The law is aimed at checking the ties of religious organizations with the aggressor country, rather than to restrict citizens’ spiritual freedoms.