60% of citizens support a complete ban on the UOC, - KIIS director

Anton Hrushetsky, executive director of the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS), said that 60% of Ukrainian society supports a complete ban on the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. Grushetsky noted that although supporters of the OCU are much less religious than believers of the UOC, they clearly associate the canonical Church with Russia. He spoke about this in an interview with the publication Obozrevatel.

«Certain markers of identity remain, the affiliation of the UOC-MP with Russia is recognized by the majority, but here it is more complicated in that when asked what the state policy towards the UOC-MP should be, more than half of Ukrainians respond that it should be completely banned. That’s about 60%. Almost 15-20% believe that state supervision should be established over it. Approximately 15% believe that only individual cases against individual offenders in the Church should be investigated,» — Hrushetsky said.

The expert noted that if, in the context of peace negotiations, Ukraine is required to grant some special status to the UOC, such a decision would be unacceptable to the majority of society. He believes that this issue can only be resolved within the country and should not be imposed from outside.

«If we are talking about a certain privileged status for the UOC-MP, then for the majority this will also be a red line, because, as in the case of language, it will be perceived as an encroachment on Ukraine’s sovereignty. People here are very sensitive about Ukraine maintaining its sovereignty in making its own decisions about which alliances to join, what its language and cultural policy should be, and so on. For example, we may not want to join NATO ourselves, but this should be our sovereign decision, not one imposed on us. This applies to both language and religion,» — he added.

Earlier, we reported that more than half of Ukrainian citizens do not support interference in the internal affairs of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. This is evidenced by the results of a sociological survey conducted by the SOCIS Center in June 2025.