Yelensky calls on UOC to abandon its Statute

Viktor Yelensky at a religious event. Photo: State Service for Ethnopolitics and Freedom of Conscience

On December 11, 2025, the State Service for Ethnopolitics and Freedom of Conscience, together with the organization “Sophia Brotherhood,” held an event in Kyiv titled “Dialogue of Church, State, and Society: Paths to Understanding,” during which the draft law banning the UOC was discussed, the DESS press service reported.

According to DESS head Viktor Yelensky, the document is “a response to attempts by the Russian Federation to use religion for subversive activity against Ukraine.” He claimed that the law “does not violate freedom of conscience.”

Commenting on the DESS lawsuit seeking to ban the Kyiv Metropolia of the UOC, Yelensky recalled that his agency’s staff had identified “signs of its affiliation with the Russian Orthodox Church” and issued an order demanding that these ties be removed.

Yelensky voiced both the complaints he has repeated many times and new ones not previously articulated. Among them was a call for the UOC to abandon its own Statute.

According to Yelensky, the Statute of the UOC “formally ties it to the Russian church structure.” He also accused the Church’s leadership of refusing to comply with the DESS order and of dragging out court proceedings.

Other participants of the event, according to the DESS press service, “discussed practical mechanisms of mutual understanding in communities and a culture of dialogue between different religious jurisdictions.” The press release does not indicate whether examples of the forcible seizures of UOC churches by OCU representatives were included in the discussion.

Earlier, the UOJ reported that Yelensky had called all those who criticized the law banning the UOC “useful idiots.”

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