DESS challenges court ruling overturning “expert review” against UOC

Court. Illustrative photo: freepik.com

On April 30, 2026, Andriy Smirnov, a member of the Expert Council of Ukraine’s State Service for Ethnopolitics and Freedom of Conscience, announced that a cassation appeal had been filed against the court ruling annulling the order on the religious studies “expert review” of the UOC Statute and declaring unlawful the actions of the service head in approving it.

The case concerns the ruling of the Sixth Administrative Court of Appeal of April 6, 2026, in case No. 320/26027/23. The court partially upheld the complaint of the Kyiv Metropolis of the UOC and annulled DESS Order No. N-8/11 of January 27, 2023, which had approved the conclusion of a religious studies “expert review” of the UOC Statute concerning the alleged presence of an ecclesiastical-canonical link with the Moscow Patriarchate.

The main ground for the ruling was that the DESS had failed to consider the Kyiv Metropolis of the UOC’s January 10, 2023 motion to recuse members of the expert group. The UOC representative had pointed to possible bias among the experts, yet the agency proceeded with the review without issuing any decision on the motion.

The court ruling states that “no decision was made following consideration of the motion to recuse four members of the DESS Expert Group, and the review was conducted without that issue being examined.”

The court also emphasized that it did not assess the substance of the “expert review” itself. The ruling states that the panel of judges acted “without delving into the correctness of the contested conclusion,” and examined only whether the procedure had been followed.

At the same time, the court found the DESS’s failure to consider the UOC’s motion to recuse the experts unlawful, as well as the actions of DESS head Viktor Yelensky in approving the conclusion while the recusal motion remained unexamined.

The court ruled to declare unlawful and annul DESS Order No. N-8/11 of January 27, 2023, and ordered the service to reconsider the issue of drafting and approving the religious studies expert conclusion, taking into account the need to examine the recusal motion.

Commenting on the ruling, Andriy Smirnov wrote that the court had ordered the DESS order to be annulled “over an alleged procedural violation in the removal of experts,” while “not delving into the correctness of the contested conclusion.”

He also stated that the court had not annulled the religious studies expert conclusion on the UOC Statute itself, and that a separate DESS order of July 8, 2025, concerning signs of affiliation of the Kyiv Metropolis of the UOC remains in force and is not related to this case.

According to Smirnov, the DESS has already filed a cassation appeal with the Supreme Court against the ruling of the Sixth Administrative Court of Appeal.

Earlier, the UOJ reported that an appellate court had overturned the conclusion of the DESS “expert review” of the UOC Statute.

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