Admit you're a Moscow priest – get a deferment
Authorities offer UOC clergy a choice: call themselves "Moscow priests" or go to the front
Over the recent period, several events have occurred that may not seem directly related, but are part of one whole.
1️⃣On April 6, the Court of Appeals overturned the DESS decision to approve the expert examination on the UOC's ties with the ROC. Three days later, the head of the OP Budanov stated that calling the UOC the "Moscow Patriarchate" is manipulation, and that the UOC has broken ties with the ROC.
2️⃣In parallel, we hear almost daily about abductions of UOC clergy by TRC employees. The latest case, when Volyn military commissars attacked the bishop, secretary, and deacon of the Volodymyr-Volynsky Eparchy, was shocking. Despite the fact that they had draft exemptions, and Metropolitan Volodymyr had even been removed from military registration altogether, the recruitment officers behaved extremely aggressively, while priest Oleksandr Kobenko was pepper-sprayed and beaten.
3️⃣Deputy head of DESS Voinalovych made a statement explaining why the TRC is hunting the UOC clergy. The reason is the UOC refuses to call itself the "Moscow Patriarchate".
Back under Poroshenko in 2018, a law was passed on the forced renaming of the UOC to ROCinU. And at the end of 2023, when Zelensky chose the course to destroy the UOC, the court declared this law effective. Moreover, the court's arguments were identical to the DESS "expertise" overturned by the sensational decision of April 6, 2026: the UOC was called "ROCinU" based on provisions of Russian documents. That is, UOC priests are being taken to the front because they refuse to call themselves "Muscovite".
To summarize:
• The TRC takes UOC priests to the front because the UOC doesn't want to change its name to "ROCinU". In other words, if you declare yourself a "Moscow priest", you are (according to the authorities' assurances) classified as "critically important infrastructure" and given an exemption. If you don't admit it – they force you to renounce your priesthood, take up arms and go to war.
• All state laws about the UOC's "ties" with Moscow (the Ministry of Culture's "expertise" of 2019, DESS's "expert examination" of 2023, and "DESS research of 2025") are built not on the UOC's Statute but on ROC documents.
• Despite the fact that some courts overturn such "ties", decisions of other courts continue to be in effect. As a result, hundreds of priests of the country's largest Orthodox denomination are abducted by military commissars and thrown to the "zero line". At the same time, numerous marginal structures of pagans or dubious sects receive exemptions without problems and feel perfectly fine.
And then the authorities brazenly assure the West that Ukraine has "freedom of faith" and "equality of denominations".
G – genocide.
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