Kyiv Authorities Present Parish Led by Oleksandr Drabynko as “New” Transition to the OCU

Kyiv city authorities have announced what they claim is a new transition of a religious community to the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU). However, one of the mentioned parishes has long been under the jurisdiction of the OCU — specifically under the leadership of former UOC bishop and now OCU hierarch, Oleksandr Drabynko. This was reported by Glavcom.

The reference is to the Transfiguration parish (Spaso-Preobrazhenska) in Kyiv’s Holosiivskyi district. It is this very church where Oleksandr Drabynko has served for many years, having publicly joined the newly established OCU back in 2018.

The “transition” of the parish was reported by Kyiv City Council member Viktoria Mukha. According to her, the changes to the parish’s statute have already been officially registered. Alongside the Transfiguration parish, the parish of Saint Martyr Paraskeva in the Dnipro district of the capital has also been recorded as joining the OCU.

It is known that during the three years of war, only four religious communities in Kyiv have actually transferred to the OCU — all in 2023. No genuine transitions have been registered in 2024.

It was previously reported that Archpriest Andrey Kordochkin, a cleric of the Ecumenical Patriarchate who had earlier served in the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) and was suspended for his anti-war stance, shared his perspective on the church situation in Ukraine. In his view, the process of granting autocephaly was poorly implemented, which only deepened the ecclesiastical division instead of fostering unity.