Internal Rifts And U.S. Politics In Play As Ukraine Considers Banning Long Russian-Linked Church

KYIV -- Things rarely heat up in Ukraine's wartime parliament. But they did on July 23 when deputies from several parties blocked the podium armed with a banner reading "The Moscow church kills" after senior legislators declined to put a bill that would ban the long Russian-linked Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) to a vote.

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy's Servant of the People party split over the fate of the legislation targeting the UOC, whose controversial role has drawn further scrutiny since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022, despite earlier vows to push it through in a vote in the Verkhovna Rada.

Adding to the frustration of the bill's backers, after refusing to put it to a vote, Rada speaker Ruslan Stefanchuk scheduled the legislature to reconvene only on August 21, putting off an outcome for a month or more.

Adoption of the law would be a watershed moment in Ukraine, where Orthodox Christianity has been riven for decades along several fault lines -- most prominently over the influence of the Russian Orthodox Church in a country that has been independent for 33 years and is now fighting for its life in a war launched by Moscow.

The long-dominant UOC saw its fortunes sink when the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU), which is aligned with Kyiv, was granted independence by Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople in 2019.

Tension did not flag after the UOC, which had been under the jurisdiction of the Russian Orthodox patriarch in Moscow, declared in May 2023 that it was severing those ties over the invasion.

Despite the formal breakup, the UOC is accused by Ukrainian authorities of maintaining links with Russia as well as propagating pro-Kremlin narratives and collaborating with occupying forces in Russian-held parts of Ukraine.

Metropolitan Onufriy, head of Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) at the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra (Monastery of the Caves) in Kyiv

The head of the UOC, Metropolitan Onufriy, continues to be a member of the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC). Other key hierarchs are members of its governing structures, and many priests continue to mention Moscow Patriarch Kirill during liturgies.

Kirill, head of the Russian Orthodox Church, is a vocal supporter of Russian President Vladimir Putin and of the war against Ukraine. In September 2022 he told Russia's soldiers that "sacrifice in the course of carrying out your military duty washes away all sins."

Since the start of the full-scale invasion, the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) has searched key churches and monasteries and opened dozens of criminal investigations into UOC clerics. Some senior UOC figures have been sanctioned by presidential decrees, including the abbot of Kyiv's ancient Monastery of the Caves, Metropolitan Pavlo.

In one recent episode, in June, Ukraine handed over Metropolitan Ionafan -- a UOC diocese head who was sentenced to five years in prison after being convicted of supporting the Russian invasion -- to Russia in a prisoner swap. He was received with honors by Patriarch Kirill.

Polls suggest many Ukrainians think the loyalties of UOC are in plain sight. In a May 2024 survey by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology, about 82 percent of respondents said they do not trust the UOC, and 63 percent said it should be banned entirely.

Against that backdrop, the last-minute halt to passage of the bill banning the UOC came as a surprise.

Mykyta Poturayev, a lawmaker from Servant of the People who was among the protesters on the parliamentary podium, said there were enough deputies ready to vote in favor and that the bill had the president's backing.

Church personnel inspect damage at the Transfiguration Cathedral in Odesa, Ukraine, on July 23, 2023, following Russian missile attacks.

"President Volodymyr Zelenskiy told me -- in the presence of witnesses -- that this law should be adopted and adopted as soon as possible. And this happened more than once," he told RFE/RL.

On August 11, Zelenskiy suggested it could happen soon. In his nightly video address, he said he had held a meeting on "a decision that will strengthen our Ukrainian spiritual independence."

"We must deprive Moscow of the last opportunities to restrict the freedom of Ukrainians. And the decisions for this must be 100 percent effective," he said. "We will ensure that."

But with the Rada in recess, speculation about the reasons behind the parliamentary drama is flurrying -- and the upcoming U.S. election figures prominently in the discussion.

Analysts say Ukrainian authorities are worried that adopting the law could fuel claims that Ukraine is persecuting Christians and that this could jeopardize U.S. military aid, particularly if former President Donald Trump wins the November 5 election.

Before Trump chose him as his running mate, Republican Senator J.D. Vance criticized the bill in remarks in April explaining his opposition to a long-delayed $61 billion package of mostly military support for Ukraine.

"Now, they say it's because these churches are too close to Russia…and maybe some of the churches are too close to Russia," Vance said. "But you don't deprive an entire religious community of their religious freedom because some of its adherents don't agree with you about the relevant conflict of the day."

Prominent lawyer Robert Amsterdam's firm, which has officers in London and Washington, was retained last autumn in a move approved by the Holy Synod of the UOC, and Amsterdam has vocally criticized the bill.

According to independent Rada member Maryana Bezuhla, Ukrainian lawmakers have felt pressure from U.S. lobbyists.

Speaking on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the subject, sources in several parliamentary factions told RFE/RL that ahead of the July 23 parliament session the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington received urgent signals that passing the law would damage Ukraine's position and reputation. The embassy declined to comment.

The situation surrounding the UOC is not the only Ukrainian religious issue to become a factor in U.S. politics and Washington's ties to Kyiv.

Earlier this year, concerns about the persecution of Protestants in Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine apparently helped break the blockage of the $61 billion aid package.

The mistreatment of Protestants and other religious minorities is part of a larger pattern of human rights violations and political repression carried out by Russia in the areas it controls in eastern and southern Ukraine.

Ukraine needs to accommodate religious sentiments among both supporters and skeptics in the United States, Serhiy Kudelia, a political scientist at Baylor University in Texas, told RFE/RL.

"It is difficult to convey these basic facts [about the UOC's links to Moscow] to the American public, and thus the criticism that comes from right-wing Republicans about the restriction of religious freedoms is unfortunately also used to explain why Ukraine should stop receiving military aid," Kudelia said.

The bill is also the subject of vocal debate inside Ukraine.

"If it is passed, will it solve the problem? Will it overcome the division of Ukrainian Orthodoxy into two branches? I don't think so. It will only anger some Orthodox Christians," said religious scholar Lyudmyla Fylypovych, who describes the bill as "too radical and populist" in its current form.

Critics of the bill note that some 1,200 changes have been proposed since an initial version of the legislation advanced in the Rada in October 2023.

U.S. President Joe Biden speaks to Metropolitan Epifaniy, head of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU), at St. Michael's Golden-Domed Monastery in Kyiv on February 20, 2023.

"Along with constructive proposals, there was a large amount of legislative spam, outright nonsense, and constructs that distorted the original intent of the draft law, as well as proposals that were openly aiming to completely destroy the essence of the bill, to make its implementation impossible and, ultimately, to discredit Ukraine in the international arena," the State Service for Ethnic Policy and Freedom of Conscience said in a statement on July 23.

Fylypovych suggested that backers of the bill were using the Russian invasion as cover for achieving their aims.

"Ukraine is now caught in a clash between religious freedom and national security," she said. "It is very convenient now to use this situation, referring to the need to protect against the Russian invasion and this war and to propose restrictions on religious freedom."

The leader of the OCU, Metropolitan Epifaniy, argues that Russia is a far greater threat to religious freedom in Ukraine than the bill to ban the OCU, and has urged its passage.

Parishioners mark Easter near a heavily damaged church in the village of Lukashivka, Chernihiv region, Ukraine, on April 16, 2023.

"This is like a law prohibiting domestic violence. This law is the only way to protect freedom of religion for those who cannot and do not want to protect it, as they decided to serve Moscow," Epifaniy said at a meeting in July. "But our position is that it is better to have an imperfect law that can be improved in the future than to have no law at all."

Lawmakers are working to find a consensus, the first deputy speaker of the Rada, Oleksandr Korniyenko, said in televised comments. They must address the expectations of the public and consider the risks so that "this law will not be questioned later, there will be no cases in the Constitutional Court."

A senior OCU cleric, Metropolitan Oleksandr, said the rival churches could draw closer together if the UOC took further steps to distance itself from the Russian church and -- albeit with no chance of being granted autocephaly through the issue of a "tomos," which the OCU received in 2019 -- come under the spiritual and administrative umbrella of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople.

If that were to happen, work on the unification of the OCU and the UOC could begin, he told RFE/RL in an interview.

"The scenario is still unlikely," he said, "but nothing is impossible."