Human rights advocates: TRC threatens those wishing to join Romanian Church

Photo: Military recruitment officers in Ukraine "at work.". Source: Focus

Three Romanian-speaking Orthodox communities in Ukraine’s Chernivtsi Oblast – located in the villages of Nyzhni Petrivtsi, Hrushivtsi, and Boyany – were forced to withdraw their applications to transfer from the UOC to the Romanian Orthodox Church following threats of forced mobilization, reports the international human rights organization Forum 18.

The parishioners held meetings and, fearing takeovers by the OCU, voted to join the Romanian Orthodox Church. On May 19, 2025, they submitted documents with amended charters to the Chernivtsi Regional Administration.

However, already the next day, on May 20, representatives of the communities returned to withdraw their applications.

“As soon as the applications were submitted, the community leaders started receiving phone calls from village mayors, law enforcement officers, and others, demanding that they revoke the applications,” a local resident told human rights defenders. “They were threatened that otherwise all the men who signed the applications would be sent to the front.”

Other reports indicate that the threats extended to mobilizing all men in the villages, including priests, if the applications were not withdrawn.

“The authorities told us they would conduct a thorough check of all the young men in the village and take them to the front,” one of the priests told Radio Liberty.

Attorney Eugen Patras, who represents the Religious Association of the Romanian Orthodox Church in Ukraine, called the situation bizarre: “Authorities are urging parishes to leave the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, but when they try to join the Romanian Orthodox Church, officials threaten them with mobilization to force them into the OCU.”

Human rights advocates note that “parishioners are afraid that their communities will be dissolved if they remain with the Ukrainian Orthodox Church,” due to the newly adopted law banning religious organizations affiliated with the Russian Orthodox Church.

As previously reported by the UOJ, the State Service for Ethnopolitics (DESS) has been sabotaging the creation of the Romanian Church in Ukraine.

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