The Legal Department of the UOC explained the court's decision to recognize as illegal the religious expertise of the DESS

The legal department of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) has published an official clarification regarding the April 6, 2026 decision of the court of appeals, which concerns the annulment of the religious expert examination of the Statute on the governance of the UOC. According to the position of the church, the court verdict confirms the illegality of the actions of state bodies and actually deprives the expert conclusion of legal force, despite attempts to distort information in a number of media outlets.

According to the Information and Education Department of the UOC, the court of appeal directly recognized the inactivity of the State Service of Ukraine for Ethnopolitics and Freedom of Conscience (DESS) as well as the illegality of the actions of its head Viktor Yelensky as illegal. The court ruling canceled the order of the State Service of Ukraine on 27.01.2023 No. N-8/11, which approved the conclusion of the expert examination. The court found that the procedural violations during the expert examination were substantial, which caused the «defectiveness» of the document itself and the impossibility to use it as a proper legal basis.

The UOC emphasizes that the statements of the representatives of the DESS that the expertise is allegedly «not canceled» are manipulative. The Legal Department notes that the expert conclusion does not have independent legal force without a corresponding order, and the bias of the expert group established by the court deprives the document of legitimacy. Thus, as of today, there is no valid legal act establishing the incorporation of the UOC into the structure of the Russian Orthodox Church.

In the context of this case the position of the international human rights organization «Forum-18» is also mentioned, which earlier pointed out the dubiousness of using religious expertise as an instrument of state influence on religious freedom. The legal department of the UOC declares its readiness to consider the case in the Supreme Court within the framework of cassation appeal, recalling that the decision of the appeal has already entered into legal force.

We shall remind you that the State Service of Ukraine for Ethnopolitics and Freedom of Conscience (DESS) provided comments on the court ruling that affected the process of recognizing the UOC’s ties with the Russian Orthodox Church. The head of the agency, Viktor Yelenskyy, emphasized that the court did not cancel the conclusion of the religious expertise itself, but only annulled the order to approve it due to procedural nuances.