Court overturns results of DESS's examination of UOC Statute due to bias of experts

The head of the Center for Rule of Law and Religion Studies, Dmytro Vovk, drew attention to the decision of the Ukrainian court to invalidate the order of the State Service of Ukraine for Ethnic Policy and Religion (DESS) on the approval of the results of the religious examination of the Charter of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC). The expert noted that the court’s decision was due to the participation in the examination of people who are biased against the canonical Church, while openly supporting the OCU. The expert wrote about this on his Facebook page.

Dmytro Vovk emphasized that the experts of the State Expert Center acted «from the orbit of a competing enterprise,» which directly contradicts the fundamental principle of impartiality. According to the lawyer, the agency ignored the obvious conflict of interest when selecting experts to conduct the analysis. Back in January 2023, the Kyiv Metropolis of the UOC demanded the removal of four members of the commission — Ihor Kozlovsky, Lyudmyla Filipovych, Yuriy Chornomorets, and Oleksandr Sagan — due to their publicly hostile position, but the DESS left this statement without consideration.

Facts confirm the close ties of the members of the expert group to the OCU. For example, in August 2025, the head of the OCU, Serhiy Dumenko, awarded Lyudmyla Filipovych the Order of Princess Olga, and in the spring of 2026, she and Oleksandr Sagan participated in joint events with representatives of this organization. Previously, these experts had made harsh statements about the UOC, calling it a «quasi-religion» and lobbying for the termination of property use agreements.

The Court of Appeal stated that ignoring the request for recusal was a significant violation that called into question the objectivity of the entire examination. As a result, the agency is obliged to reconsider the formation of the expert group and the analysis of the UOC Charter. At the moment, the DESS has already filed a cassation appeal with the Supreme Court of Ukraine in an attempt to challenge the verdict of the appellate instance.

As reported, on April 6, 2026, the Sixth Administrative Court of Appeal ruled in favor of the Kyiv Metropolis of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in case No. 320/26027/23, effectively canceling the results of the earlier religious examination.