“Let them declare their withdrawal from the Russian Orthodox Church": Elensky told how exactly the UOC should break ties with the Moscow Patriarchate

The head of the State Service of Ukraine for Ethnopolitics and Freedom of Conscience, Viktor Yelenskyy, has spoken about how the state will determine whether the Ukrainian Orthodox Church has broken ties with the Russian Orthodox Church. The official believes that the UOC should make appropriate statements. About this he told in an interview with the publication “Ukrinform”.

“The law explicitly stipulates that they can submit a statement that the UOC withdraws from the ROC, its bishops withdraw from the episcopate, synod, synodal commissions – and we will be guided by this, and not by the statements of the Russian Orthodox Church”, – said Elensky.

It should be noted that the authors of the law “On the ban of the UOC” contradict themselves about how exactly the UOC should break ties with the Russian Orthodox Church. For example, Ukrainian MP and head of the Committee on Humanitarian and Information Policy Nikita Poturaev spoke about the requirements that the state sets before the episcopate of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in connection with the adoption of the anti-church bill No. 8371 in the Verkhovna Rada. Poturaev claims that the withdrawal of the Primate and bishops of the UOC from the Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church is an insufficient measure to fulfill the norms of the mentioned law.