The Bulgarian Orthodox Church has expressed its support for the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in the legal proceedings regarding the ban on the Kyiv Metropolis

The Bulgarian Orthodox Church has expressed its support for the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) amid the ongoing court proceedings stemming from a lawsuit filed by the State Service of Ukraine for Ethnopolitics and Freedom of Conscience (GESS), aimed at dissolving the Kyiv Metropolis. Corresponding letters from Patriarch Daniel of Bulgaria and several metropolitans of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church were sent to the Sixth Administrative Court of Appeal in Kyiv and the Kyiv Metropolis of the UOC.

, a lawyer for the UOC and Archpriest Nikita Chekman, confirmed receipt of the official letters, although their content remains confidential at this time. Church representatives are actively monitoring the progress of the case, providing access to online broadcasts of the hearings via the official portal of Ukraine’s judiciary.

It should be noted that the legal dispute has been ongoing since September 2025. The State Service’s claims seeking the dissolution of the Kyiv Metropolis are being contested by the UOC’s defense, which filed a counterclaim demanding that the State Service’s actions be declared unlawful. A key milestone was the decision by the Administrative Court of Cassation in May 2026, which upheld the Metropolis’s appeal and ruled that the religious studies expert analysis of the UOC’s Charter conducted by the State Service of Religious Affairs was legally flawed and invalid.

It should be recalled that earlier, Bulgarian Patriarch Daniel called for a balanced approach to the issue of the Ukrainian church schism. As the Primate of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church emphasized, after the Patriarchate of Constantinople granted the Tomos to the new church structure in Ukraine in 2019, the Bulgarian Church adopted a wait-and-see stance and has not recognized this decision to date.