“The UOC will be able to decide its own fate after the break with the Russian Orthodox Church” - Yelenskiy

The head of the State Service for Ethnic Policy and Freedom of Conscience, Viktor Yelensky, said that the Ukrainian Orthodox Church will be able to decide its future independently after it officially breaks all ties with the Russian Orthodox Church. Yelensky claims that after taking concrete steps in this direction, the UOC will be able to proclaim autocephaly, convene a Pan-Orthodox Council, or join the OCU. He said this in an interview with Interfax.

“If the UOC breaks off its relations and withdraws from the Russian Church, it is free to further decide its canonical fate. It can appeal to all Orthodox churches and say: let’s convene an Orthodox council on this issue. I had a conversation with Metropolitan Onufriy… I told him that we do not demand that he join another church, I said that we do not demand to switch to a new calendar, etc., that we are only talking about severing ties with Moscow,” — Yelensky said.

Earlier we reported that the Ukrainian government, represented by the State Service of Ukraine for Ethnic Policy and Freedom of Conscience, refused to register the Romanian Patriarchate in the “Romanian Orthodox Church of Ukraine,” which the Romanian Orthodox Church established at its Synod in February 2024. According to Kyiv, this idea contradicts “Orthodox ecclesiological localism.”