Zelensky's narratives of the UOC: What percentage is true?

Zelensky voiced several statements about the UOC in an interview with Piers Morgan. Photo: UOJ

On February 4, 2025, an interview with V. Zelensky by British journalist Piers Morgan was published. Naturally, we are mainly interested in what the President said about the religious situation in Ukraine. However, his other statements help us understand the state of mind of the head of state in terms of psychology and diplomacy.

A few words about the level of culture and politics

On December 19, 2024, V. Zelensky used obscene language against Putin on the social media platform X in response to the Russian president’s cynical proposal to conduct a "duel" over Kyiv between the Russian ballistic missile "Oreshnik" and Western air defense systems. Similar profanity, directed at the same recipient, was heard on the program “Meet the Press” of the American TV channel NBC News. These are far from the only instances of such behavior from our official leadership.

Russia has indeed unleashed a bloody war against Ukraine, where innocent people are dying, and such rhetoric toward the aggressor is quite understandable on a human level. But can it be justified coming from the head of state, whose words and actions determine the fate of thousands of lives? A serious politician can hardly afford such statements simply because they harm the interests of the country he represents.

Yesterday, V. Zelensky called V. Putin foul words, and today he admitted that he might sit down at the negotiating table with him. When Piers Morgan asked how he would feel sitting opposite Putin during potential peace talks, Zelensky replied: "If this is the only way we can achieve peace for Ukrainian citizens and avoid more losses, of course, we will accept this configuration."

A simple question: will profanity contribute to the success of this "configuration", i.e. the negotiations between Zelensky and Putin? How many lives and what percentage of our country's territory can it cost?

In his interview with Piers Morgan, Zelensky continued to insult people on whom Ukraine's support depends and with whom he may also have to sit at the same table. Speaking about American journalist Tucker Carlson, he said: "It seems to me he needs to get a deeper understanding of what's going on in Ukraine, stop working for Putin, stop kissing his ass. Honestly."

While such rhetoric may be acceptable for casual kitchen-table talks, for public statements by a head of state – not so much. Whether we agree with Tucker Carlson’s stance or not, he remains one of the most popular American journalists, with a huge impact on public opinion. His videos receive hundreds of millions of views. He is part of the current U.S. president’s team and enjoys his trust.

Is it in Ukraine’s interests for V. Zelensky to engage in insults against T. Carlson, especially when Ukraine is critically dependent on American military and financial aid?

These are just a few examples characterizing the level of culture and behavior of our leader in international politics. But the religious sphere is even more complex and sensitive. And here things are even worse for V. Zelensky. It seems he simply does not fully understand what he is talking about.

Zelensky’s narrative about the UOC’s exclusion from UCCRO

The part of V. Zelensky’s interview with P. Morgan regarding the religious situation in Ukraine was his response to Tucker Carlson’s accusations of dictatorship due to the UOC ban. The very fact that Zelensky had to justify himself suggests that these accusations are not baseless. The President’s words in his defense only reinforce the certainty of T. Carlson’s rightness – simply because he said something that does not exist. Or, at the very least, something that has not been publicly announced.

This concerns Zelensky’s claim that the All-Ukrainian Council of Churches and Religious Organizations (UCCRO) excluded the UOC from its ranks.

First, V. Zelensky praised the Ukrainian Council of Churches in every way, saying it is the largest such organization in Europe, that the U.S. does not have anything like it, and that all religious organizations are UCCRO members. Then he stated:

"Also, the Moscow Patriarchate was also a member of the Council of Churches. And what was its mistake? The fact is that all the population is against the Moscow Patriarchate, however that may sound. But the thing is that nobody is closing anything – this is the Council of Churches, and they discussed and decided among themselves that they had excluded the Moscow Patriarchate from the Council of Churches. This was done only by the denominations. They do it themselves without any influence."

The first thing that catches the eye is that Zelensky persistently uses the expression “Moscow Patriarchate”. But the Moscow Patriarchate is located in Moscow, and for that reason alone, it could not have been a UCCRO member. If Zelensky means the UOC, then legally, it has never been the Moscow Patriarchate. This Church has always been the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in the Ukrainian state, without any prefixes or indications of patriarchates. That is exactly how it is named in all official legal and canonical documents. According to the principle of legal certainty, organizations should be called by their actual names, not by made-up ones according to someone's personal whim.

The Moscow Patriarchate has never been excluded from the UCCRO, nor has the UOC. As of today, there is no information that such a vote was held or that any exclusion took place. Metropolitan Onuphry is still listed on the UCCRO website as a member of the organization, titled "Primate of the UOC, Metropolitan of Kyiv and All Ukraine".

An even greater falsehood is Zelensky's claim that "all the population is against the Moscow Patriarchate" – again, if by this term he meant the UOC. In 2023, religious scholar and expert from the State Ethnopolitics Servive, Liudmyla Fylypovych, estimated the number of UOC believers at 5-6 million citizens. According to Zelensky, they are not part of Ukraine's population?

Over nearly three years of full-scale war, the UOC has sent hundreds of vehicles to the front, provided thousands of sets of personal protective equipment, and offered aid to both our soldiers and displaced persons worth millions of hryvnias. Many bishops, rectors of churches, and abbots of monasteries have received letters of appreciation from the commanders of various Ukrainian Armed Forces units.

All the people who have received assistance from the UOC, even if they are not believers, have a positive attitude toward the Church. Does Zelensky also consider them not part of Ukraine’s population?

The narrative of "legal connection" between the UOC and the Moscow Patriarchate

A quote from Zelensky's interview with Piers Morgan:

"Secondly, at the legislative level, a decision was enacted in Parliament that there can be no Moscow Patriarchate. This means that this Church must re-register legally. There can be no legal connection with Moscow. That's what this is about – that the Moscow Patriarchate is being closed, there can be no legal connection. And they must be a Ukrainian Church, legally in Ukrainian jurisdiction."

All the requirements listed by Zelensky have been met by the UOC since 1990. At that time, Ukraine was still part of the Soviet Union and governed from Moscow, yet the UOC was already independent, managing itself through its own governing bodies: the Holy Synod, the Local Council, and the Council of Bishops. This is confirmed by the UOC Statute, as well as the decision of the 1990 Bishops' Council of the ROC and the Letter issued by Patriarch Alexy II. So, what is Zelensky still dissatisfied with? Why is he demanding that a religious organization re-register when it already has no legal ties to Moscow? The UOC Council in Feofaniya on May 27, 2022, reaffirmed the Church’s full autonomy and independence and completely removed all references to Moscow from its Statute. To verify this, one only needs to open the Church’s "Constitution" – its Statute.

Perhaps, V. Zelensky confuses the concepts of "legal" and "canonical". But canonically, the UOC is also independent of the ROC, especially after the Council in Feofaniya. Ukrainian bishops are not part of the governing bodies of the ROC, the ROC’s decisions have no force for the UOC, and the UOC Primate does not receive a blessing for his prelacy from the ROC Patriarch. If we consider canon law in a narrow sense as the canons of Ecumenical Councils, Local Councils, and the Holy Fathers (the last two categories were also approved by the authority of the Ecumenical Councils), they do not define at all which Church can be considered autocephalous, which is autonomous, and which is dependent on another Church. In any case, church canons do not fall within the competence of secular authorities. The state is only concerned with legal aspects. And within the framework of these aspects, the UOC is entirely independent of the Moscow Patriarchate.

Thus, equating the UOC with the Moscow Patriarchate and demanding its re-registration in Ukraine is nothing more than an attempt to destroy it under the guise of false narratives.

The claim that talks of banning the UOC are "Putin's narratives"

A quote from Zelensky's interview with Piers Morgan:

"So, religious institutions made this decision (to exclude the UOC from the UCCRO – Ed.). And it doesn’t matter. These are all lies. That is Putin’s narrative. Putin has a narrative about the Moscow Patriarchate, about the Russian Church. <…> As for denominations, as for elections – this is all Putin’s narrative."

Here, Zelensky appears to be referring to the legislative ban on the UOC. Ukrainian authorities claim that there is no such a ban. The relevant law prohibits the ROC’s activities in Ukraine, and the UOC is simply required to prove its independence from the ROC and then no one will ban it. But the thing is that the law is designed in such a way that the UOC has no possible way to prove it any way. In all seriousness, the Ukrainian law states that if a Ukrainian religious organization is considered part of a Russian religious organization according to internal Russian documents (in this case, the ROC Statute), then Ukraine officially recognizes this state of affairs. It is hard to imagine anything more absurd but no effort is being spared in the attempt to destroy the Church.

Ukrainian laws are deliberately designed to ban the activities of the UOC, the country’s largest religious organization. Everyone understands this, regardless of the terminology used to justify it whether it’s "Moscow Patriarchate", "Russian World", or something else. This has been pointed out by U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance, attorney Robert Amsterdam, journalist Tucker Carlson, as well as numerous American and European politicians, experts, and international organizations, including the UN.

The Ukrainian Parliament has passed an anti-Church law, the Ukrainian President has signed it, and Ukrainian local governments are making decisions that explicitly ban the UOC or call for its prohibition. Ukrainian radicals and activists are seizing churches, territorial communities are making unlawful decisions to transfer parishes to the OCU, etc. And yet, according to Zelensky, all of these actions are supposedly part of "Putin’s narratives". How should this be interpreted?

But it used to be different

Before the 2019 presidential election campaign, when Volodymyr Zelensky was still performing in the “Kvartal 95” show, he creatively and wittily mocked then-President Petro Poroshenko’s initiative to obtain a Tomos for the OCU. In one performance, Zelensky joked that the Tomos was warming Poroshenko like a thermos (and where was he wrong?). In another, he used an analogy with family relationships to illustrate how absurd it was to erase canonical Orthodoxy from history and replace it with a new, national version.

During the election campaign, Zelensky made it clear that state interference in church affairs was unacceptable and harmful, and that under his presidency, all religious denominations would be treated equally. He assured voters that he would not allow political manipulation of his religious beliefs. "Don’t look for me in church," he stated even after winning the election.

Shortly after becoming president, Zelensky met with the leaders of Ukraine’s major religious denominations. On April 30, 2019, on the third day of Easter, he visited the residence of His Beatitude Metropolitan Onuphry to congratulate him on the feast and discuss urgent issues.

On September 10, 2019, Zelensky met with UOC believers at the Rivne Airport, where they handed him documents detailing violations of their religious freedom. The President took the documents, promised to look into the matter and restore justice.

Bishop Pimen (Voyat) of Rivne, who was present at the meeting, said the following about it: "The impressions are positive – they approached us and wanted to hear us. … We are Ukrainians, and we were the first to welcome the President here, in the Rivne land. We are Ukrainians, and we do not want to be, nor will we be, outcasts in our own land. We must pray that the Lord helps us."

Even after the full-scale war began, Zelensky personally thanked the UOC in one of his addresses for organizing a humanitarian convoy to besieged Mariupol. At that time, Metropolitan Luke (Kovalenko) of Zaporizhzhia delivered more than 90 tons of food and medicine to Mariupol. And yet, back then, we didn’t hear the President referring to the UOC as the "Moscow Patriarchate".

Conclusions

At the beginning of his presidency, Zelensky’s desire to stay out of church affairs and ensure true religious freedom in Ukraine seemed sincere. What has changed? Why did he go from being a reasonable leader with a pragmatic approach to religious policy to someone actively persecuting the Church? After all, the Church itself hasn’t changed one bit.

Its stance toward the Ukrainian state and people has remained the same. On the very first day of Russia’s full-scale aggression, the UOC called on everyone to defend Ukraine’s sovereignty and independence. Throughout the war, it has supported Ukrainian soldiers and refugees in every possible way. It has blessed believers to take up arms in defense of the country. It has held funerals for the fallen and collected donations and supplies for the front lines.

So, why has Zelensky’s attitude toward the Church changed so dramatically? Why did he use to pursue a reasonable religious policy but now he is confused in his words and translates clearly untrue narratives that no one believes anymore?

These questions worry many people. But only he can answer them.

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