Paris discusses pressure on UOC and calls for international monitoring

A roundtable discussion titled «Ukrainian Orthodox Church: Challenges and Prospects» was held in Paris to discuss the pressure on the UOC by the Ukrainian authorities. The event, organized by European human rights activists, theologians and analysts, ended with a call for international monitoring of the situation with religious freedom in Ukraine and support for believers.

According to Baznica.Info, the discussion was attended by theologian Dimitri Krykhan, sociologist Nikolai Mitrokhin, human rights activist and Lutheran pastor Pavel Levushkan, human rights activist Denis Lapin and Orthodox writer Ilya Zabezhinsky. The moderator of the meeting, Pavel Levushkan, noted that this roundtable is a continuation of a series of meetings that were previously held in Berlin and Brussels, where the participants had already spoken at the European Commission.

«We shared our concerns with European politicians and were heard. Our interlocutors from the European Commission are well aware that the situation in which the UOC finds itself is unacceptable from the point of view of basic human rights,» Levushkan said. According to him, the actions of the Ukrainian authorities, such as deprivation of legal registration, pressure on dioceses and forced transfers of parishes, have become systemic and are aimed at «internal division, provoking chaos and undermining the position of the Church.»

During the event, data was presented according to which more than 1300 parishes of the UOC have been seized since the beginning of the war. As an example, the Chernivtsi region was cited, where about 50 churches formally changed jurisdiction, but only 17 of them were officially registered as part of the OCU.

Following the roundtable, the participants called on the international community to monitor the situation with religious freedom in Ukraine, support believers who refused to change their denomination under pressure, and recognize that pressure on the country’s largest religious organization is unacceptable in a democratic state. It was also emphasized that freedom of conscience is not a war crime.

As we reported earlier, a new UN report on the situation with human rights violations in Ukraine for the period from December 1, 2024 to May 31, 2025 recorded attacks on the clergy and believers of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. The document cites the situation with the seizures of UOC churches in Bukovyna as an example, and indicates that the incidents took place with the full connivance of law enforcement agencies.