Amsterdam criticizes anti-UOC law in British media

Robert Amsterdam on the British channel GB News in the program The Camilla Tominey Show. Photo: a YouTube screenshot

On December 21, 2025, the lawyer of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church Robert Amsterdam gave an interview on the British channel GB News in the program The Camilla Tominey Show, in which he spoke about the persecution of the UOC and criticized the actions of the Ukrainian authorities.

According to the human rights advocate, a serious problem for Christians worldwide has become the policy of the EU and the USA, which, he claims, at some point decided to interfere in religious affairs. One of the catastrophic consequences of such a policy, he said, is the situation in Ukraine.

Amsterdam stated that back in 2014, some politicians in the USA decided to destroy the UOC, which was a thousand years old, believing that the Church allegedly had close ties with Russia. He noted that, having experience in legal battles with Vladimir Putin, he decided to personally come to Kyiv and conduct his own investigation.

"So when they asked to retain me, I went to Kiev with a group during the war to really investigate myself and I was shocked by what I found. Tortured priests, stolen churches, viciously persecuted men of faith and they were following a plan laid out by the State Department. But it it also heightened this ethnationalism that exists in Ukraine," the lawyer stated.

According to Amsterdam, the Ukrainian government is ultra-nationalist and has passed a law aimed at destroying the Church. "There is no room under the Ukrainian constitution or international law for law 3894. The Pope, and the Church of England agree on this... If there was any organization in Ukraine that was captured by Russia, it was the secret police that literally almost disbanded after the invasion of 2022," he emphasized, speaking about the SBU.

Earlier, the UOJ wrote that Amsterdam stated that the conditions of Metropolitan Arseniy's detention contrast with the image of Ukraine that its officials present in Washington.

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