The Ukrainian parliament has banned a branch of the Orthodox Church that is affiliated with the Russian Orthodox Church.
Kiev claims that the church, which calls itself the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC), spread pro-Moscow propaganda and harbored spies.
Around 265 MPs passed a law on Tuesday that bans the Russian Orthodox Church from entering Ukraine.
A government commission is to compile a list of organizations “associated” with the UOC. Reuters reports.
“This is a historic vote. Parliament has passed a law prohibiting the aggressor country from establishing itself in Ukraine,” MP Iryna Herashchenko wrote on Telegram.
President Volodymyr Zelensky announced the law last week, saying it would strengthen Ukraine’s “spiritual independence.”
Today we discussed with our partners the work on air defense – new systems for Ukraine. We are preparing to strengthen our defense.
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The UOC was historically part of the Russian Orthodox Church, but began to create distance between itself and Moscow after Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Church spokesman Metropolitan Klyment denied any links with “foreign centers.” He told Hromadske TV: “The Orthodox Church of Ukraine will continue to live as a true church, recognized by the vast majority of practicing Ukrainian believers and the churches of the world.”
Russian diplomatic spokeswoman Maria Zakharova criticized the move, saying the law aimed to “destroy true Orthodoxy and replace it with a substitute church, a pseudo-church.”
Several conservative figures in America, including Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson, have spoken out against what they believe is the persecution of Christians in Ukraine.
In July 2023, Carlson asked former Vice President Mike Pence in an interview whether he had raised the issue of “persecuted Christians in Ukraine” during his meeting with Zelensky the previous month in Kyiv.
The former Fox News The moderator said the Ukrainian government had “raided monasteries” and “de facto banned” the primacy of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in the country.
Pence responded: “What I can tell you is that I asked the Christian leader in Kyiv if that (the arrest of Christians) was actually happening, and he assured me that it was not. People were not being persecuted because of their religious beliefs.”
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Shortly thereafter, the US-based Orthodox Public Affairs Committee (OPAC) spoke out against Carlson’s comments, calling them “nonsensical.”
In a statement to NewsweekThe OPAC said it was “deeply concerned” about how media personalities like Carlson “continue to spread Russian propaganda about so-called persecution of Christians in Ukraine.”
“Carlson, who has little to no understanding of the complexity of the religious reality in Ukraine, is only fueling further division with his nonsensical statements,” it continued.
The head of the Greek Catholic Church in Ukraine had previously spoken about the destruction of religious buildings and the arrests and killings of religious leaders in the Russian-Ukrainian war.
He told Newsweek: “Today there is not a single Catholic priest in the occupied territory. All my priests, even the Roman Catholic priests, have been expelled or imprisoned.
Russia is returning “to the times of the Soviet Union, when all these religions were banned or overly controlled or simply destroyed,” he added.
