The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry criticized the UN for its position on the law banning the Ukrainian Orthodox Church

On January 2, 2025, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine issued a statement criticizing the position of the United Nations regarding Law 3894, which aims to ban the activities of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs considers the UN’s conclusions that the right to freedom of religion is being violated in Ukraine to be untenable, pointing out that the law is intended to protect Ukrainian society from Russia’s destructive influence on Ukrainian society through religion. The comment was published on the official website of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine.

“We reject the UN’s conclusions on the amendments to the Law of Ukraine ‘On Protection of the Constitutional Order in the Field of Activities of Religious Organizations’ as distorting the reality. We emphasize once again that the law mentioned in the report does not provide for the prohibition of any of the churches existing in Ukraine. It merely prevents religious organizations in Ukraine from being subordinated to governing centers located in a state that has carried out or is carrying out armed aggression against Ukraine and/or temporarily occupying part of its territory, as well as religious organizations that support armed aggression against Ukraine. We remind the UN that Russia systematically uses religion as a weapon in its war of aggression against Ukraine. The Russian state, through its controlled ROC, sanctifies atrocities against Ukrainians and praises the criminals who commit them. In this context, the Ukrainian state is obliged to protect its citizens from the destructive influence of the aggressor state, in particular with the use of religious organizations that are fused with the state in the Russian Federation and have explicitly declared their goal to destroy Ukrainian statehood, culture, and identity,” – the Foreign Ministry said in a commentary.

In addition, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine calls the law banning the UOC a legitimate attempt to “withdraw Ukrainian believers from the pressure of the Russian Orthodox Church,” and therefore, the actions of the Ukrainian authorities regarding the UOC are “necessary and democratic.”

“The law pursues a legitimate goal, is necessary in a democratic society, provides for a democratic procedure in which the court has the last word; it is the least burdensome, since it does not impose a burden on the conscience of believers, but only removes them from the pressure of the Russian Orthodox Church, which, as noted in the PACE Resolution, “is an ideological continuation of the criminal regime”. […] We hope that in its reports, the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission will continue to provide objective assessments of the real situation with freedom of religion in Ukraine and will continue to record Russian crimes against Ukrainian believers, religious communities and leaders, church property,” – the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry added.

Earlier, we reported that the United Nations published the final report of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, which points out the inconsistency of the norms of the scandalous law No. 3894, aimed at banning the activities of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, with international law. The document states that Ukraine failed to substantiate the need for and proportionality of measures aimed at banning religious organizations.