Bulgarian Church voices support for UOC ahead of DESS lawsuit hearing

Court proceedings in the DESS lawsuit against the UOC’s Kyiv Metropolis. Photo: UOJ

On July 22, 2026, the Sixth Administrative Court of Appeal in Kyiv and the UOC’s Kyiv Metropolis received letters from Bulgarian Patriarch Daniil and metropolitans of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, UOC lawyer Archpriest Nikita Chekman reported.

The letters were sent in connection with the court’s consideration of a lawsuit filed by Ukraine’s State Service for Ethnopolitics and Freedom of Conscience seeking the dissolution of the Kyiv Metropolis. The contents of the Bulgarian hierarchs’ letters have not yet been published.

Nikita Chekman also posted a link to a livestream of the court hearing.

The proceedings can be followed on the official portal of Ukraine’s judiciary.

As the UOJ reported earlier, the court proceedings have been underway since September 2025, when DESS filed a lawsuit seeking the dissolution of the UOC’s Kyiv Metropolis. Church representatives filed a counterclaim demanding that the actions of the head of the state agency be declared unlawful and that the order approving the religious expert assessment of the UOC Statute be overturned.

In May 2026, the Administrative Court of Cassation upheld the Metropolis’s appeal and overturned the decision to separate the claims contained in the counterclaim. Before that, the appellate court had ruled that the DESS assessment was “defective” and had no legal force.

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