DESS: Only one-third of military chaplain positions in AFU are filled

Chaplain. Photo: Ukrinform

In the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU), military chaplain positions are only 36% filled. This was reported by Vyacheslav Horshkov, Head of the Department for Religious Affairs of the State Service of Ukraine for Ethnopolitics and Freedom of Conscience (DESS), during the press conference "The Legal Framework for Chaplaincy Activities and Interfaith Understanding in Modern Ukraine," as reported by Ukrinform.

Horshkov emphasized that these figures were provided by the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine to the State Ethnopolitics Agency.

According to Horshkov, chaplains should make up at least 1.5% of the total number of military personnel. However, "churches are unable to fill these positions at the required pace."

It is relevant to recall that in the summer of 2024, the AFU reported that the military chaplain corps was only 50% staffed.

Earlier, the UOJ reported that, according to a chaplain from the Greek Catholic Church, as of mid-2023, UGCC priests were reluctant to join the army.

Before that, the All-Ukrainian Council of Churches and Religious Organizations (UCCRO) stated that clergy from the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU) and the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (UGCC) were unwilling to serve as chaplains. Out of 738 available positions, only 150 were filled. The largest number of chaplaincy mandates had been issued to the OCU – 494. However, only 97 of them were actively serving in the military, which is just 20%. The situation was similar with the UGCC: out of 91 mandates, only 25 chaplains were serving in the AFU.

Read also