The Office of the President of Ukraine continues to refute “myths” about the ban on the UOC

Ukrainian officials continue to justify the ban on the Ukrainian Orthodox Church abroad. This time, the deputy head of the Office of the President of Ukraine, Olena Kovalskaya, published an article in the American magazine National Review, in which she said that it is actually Russia that violates the rights of religious organizations in Ukraine, and uses the situation with the ban on the UOC to justify its claims about protecting Orthodoxy. This was reported by OBOZ.UA.

As Kovalskaya noted in the article, since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, Russia has destroyed 652 churches in Ukraine and killed 67 pastors and priests. «The brutal persecution of representatives of various religious communities began in 2014, immediately after the occupation of Crimea and parts of Donetsk and Luhansk regions. In the spring of 2023, the year of the occupation of Melitopol, all local churches had already been closed, with the exception of those belonging to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate.»

According to the official from the Office of the President of Ukraine, Protestants are the most persecuted: Baptists, Pentecostals, Seventh-day Adventists, and Jehovah’s Witnesses. “The Russian authorities do not tolerate any dissent, any religious freedom, any inclination towards God or truth, except that which comes from the Moscow Patriarchate,” — Kovalskaya said.

Recall that the State Service of Ukraine for Ethnic Policy and Freedom of Conscience, which denied clergy of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church the possibility of deferral from military mobilization on religious grounds, was concerned about the clergy of the UOC who died as a result of the Russian-Ukrainian war. The head of the State Service, Viktor Yelensky, noted that “Patriarch Kirill did not express condolences” for any of the deceased priests of the UOC.