DESS experts are publicly linked to OCU – legal scholar

Dmytro Vovk. Photo: Vovk's Facebook

The experts of Ukraine’s State Service for Ethnopolitics and Freedom of Conscience (DESS) who conducted the review of the Statute of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church are publicly linked to the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU), said Professor of Law Dmytro Vovk, head of the Center for Rule of Law and Religion Studies.

“Many of the experts involved in this expert review are connected with another Orthodox church – the Orthodox Church of Ukraine,” Vovk noted. According to him, the DESS experts operate “from the orbit of a competing enterprise,” while impartiality is a “fundamental principle” of expert activity. Yet the DESS “saw no problem in selecting experts in this way.”

On January 10, 2023, the Kyiv Metropolis of the UOC filed a motion to recuse four of the seven experts – Ihor Kozlovskyi, Liudmyla Fylypovych, Yuriy Chornomorets, and Oleksandr Sahan. Kozlovskyi had called on television for the adoption of a law banning the UOC. Fylypovych had referred to the UOC as a “quasi-religion.” Chornomorets had called the Church “UOC-FSB” and demanded the deportation of bishops. Sahan had lobbied for the termination of property agreements with UOC communities. The DESS failed to consider the motion and issued no decision on it.

The experts’ links with the OCU were also confirmed by subsequent events. In August 2025, OCU head Serhiy Dumenko awarded Fylypovych the Order of Princess Olga. In March 2026, Fylypovych and Sahan took part in a joint event with OCU “bishop” Ephrem Khomiak at Kyiv’s main mosque, where they received the Al-Fida Order. Fylypovych also publicly called for the use of “Soviet mechanisms of influence on consciousness” to promote the OCU among the population.

As the UOJ reported, on April 6, 2026, Kyiv’s Sixth Administrative Court of Appeal annulled the DESS order approving the UOC expert conclusion, finding that the failure to consider the recusal motion was a significant procedural violation that “calls into question the impartiality of the conducted review.” The agency is required to reconsider the drafting and approval of the religious studies review of the UOC Statute. On May 1, 2026, the DESS filed a cassation appeal with the Supreme Court of Ukraine.

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