Advisor to OP deputy head: UOC not banned but given a choice – OCU or Phanar

Viktoriia Tytarenko in Brussels. Photo: Tytarenko’s Facebook page

Adviser to the Deputy Head of the Presidential Office of Ukraine, Viktoriia Tytarenko, speaking in Brussels at the forum “Resilient Europe: Countering Russian Disinformation and Propaganda,” stated that the Ukrainian authorities are not banning the Ukrainian Orthodox Church but are merely offering its clergy and communities a change of jurisdiction.

According to her, the Ukrainian government, “despite everything, has not banned the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.”

“The UOC has been given a choice. Please – either you unite with the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, or you go under the omophorion of the Ecumenical Patriarch, or you remain in the status of unregistered communities,” Tytarenko said.

She did not specify where or in what official form such proposals to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church had been voiced by the authorities.

Tytarenko also criticized the World Council of Churches and the United Nations for statements in defense of the UOC. According to her, statements by the WCC claiming that “the rights of believers are allegedly being violated” and that “religious freedom is being suppressed” in Ukraine with regard to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church affiliated with the ROC are “one of the propaganda narratives, very sensitive for Europe and, ultimately, for the United States.”

The advisor to the Deputy Head of the Presidential Office said that through statements by UN experts on the persecution of the UOC in Ukraine, “once again an idea is being planted in the minds of Europeans that national security is not a basis for restricting the manifestation of this freedom.”

Tytarenko called such theses erroneous, at the same time criticizing Belgium for blocking the possibility of using frozen Russian assets as reparations for Ukraine.

She assured those present that “an entire agent network” of UOC clergy had allegedly been uncovered in Ukraine. “Perhaps not everyone in the UOC is a criminal or collaborator, but whoever is a collaborator is from the UOC,” Tytarenko emphasized.

Earlier, the UOJ reported that Andriy Yermak had introduced a supervisor for religious affairs in the Office of the President.

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