Kropyvnytskyi City Council calls on VR and the Cabinet to ban UOC

Session of the Kropyvnytsky City Council on May 4, 2023. Photo: kr-rada.gov.ua

On May 4, 2023, at a session of the Kropyvnytskyi City Council, deputies adopted an appeal to the Verkhovna Rada, the Cabinet of Ministers and majoritarian MPs from the Kropyvnytskyi territorial community with a call to urgently finalize and consider draft laws No. 8371 and No. 8221 aimed at prohibiting the activities of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. This was reported by the press service of the City Council.

As a reason for such an appeal, its initiators used an electronic petition that received the required number of votes to ban the activities of the UOC in the region and the city of Kropyvnytskyi.

In the appeal, the deputies accuse the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of spreading Russian propaganda and collaborationism and refer to the results of the “religious expertise” of the State Service for Ethnopolitics and Freedom of Conscience, which “confirmed” that the UOC is allegedly a structural subdivision of the Russian Orthodox Church.

“We consider unacceptable the continued existence and activity of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in Ukraine as a whole and on the territory of the Kropyvnytskyi city territorial community in particular,” the deputies write.

They note that according to the current legislation, local governments do not have the right to prohibit religious organizations, and the adoption of anti-church laws will allow the local authorities to deprive the UOC communities of the right to use communal property, including land plots.

As the UOJ reported, earlier deputies of the Irpin City Council decided to send an appeal to the President, the Verkhovna Rada, the Cabinet of Ministers and the National Security and Defense Council to ban the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.

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