OCU lobbyist Liudmyla Filipovych receives award from Epiphany Dumenko

On August 7, 2025, the head of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU), Epifaniy Dumenko, received well-known religious scholar and media lobbyist for the OCU, Liudmyla Filipovych. During the meeting, they discussed the “interaction between Church and society” during wartime, the role of the OCU in preserving “national identity,” and interfaith dialogue. The meeting was reported on the OCU’s official website.

Special attention was given to issues on which Filipovych consistently speaks from a pro-OCU and anti-UOC position.

As a token of gratitude for her “contribution to the development of religious studies” and her support for the OCU, Dumenko awarded Filipovych the Order of Saint Equal-to-the-Apostles Princess Olha.

It is worth recalling that Liudmyla Filipovych publicly supported the position of Ukraine’s State Service for Ethnopolitics and Freedom of Conscience regarding the proposed ban on the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. She believes the UOC must officially and publicly declare its separation from the Russian Orthodox Church in order to avoid prohibition. According to Filipovych, the decisions made at the UOC Council in Feofaniya in 2022 are insufficient in the eyes of the state.