“8 thousand lawsuits against the UOC will not happen,” - the head of the SSERFC

The head of the State Service of Ukraine for Ethnopolitics and Freedom of Conscience, Viktor Yelenskyy, has spoken about how the law No. 8371 “on banning the UOC” recently passed in the Verkhovna Rada will be implemented in practice. Yelenskyy claims that the state will not sue every religious community belonging to the UOC, but, first of all, will direct its forces to fight against the Kyiv Metropolitan Church of the UOC and the structures founded by it. About this he told in comments to the publication “Interfax”.

“Of course, the lawsuit, if the UOC does not withdraw from the ROC, is first filed against the Kiev Metropolitanate. In order to stop the activities of the Kiev Metropolis, it is necessary to stop the activities of those religious organizations that it has registered,” Yelensky told the newspaper.

The head of the SSERFC added that it is not about closing religious communities in each particular locality, but about “dismantling the structures of the Moscow Patriarchate in Ukraine”. When asked whether the large number of lawsuits would complicate the process of implementing the law, Yelensky emphasized that there would not be 8,000 courts.

We shall remind you that the head of the department of religious studies of the Institute of Philosophy of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Oleksandr Sagan, believes that the UOC should not expect any movement towards merger with other structures. The religious scholar is convinced that such a course was announced by the Primate of the Church, His Beatitude Metropolitan Onufriy of Kiev and All Ukraine.