Ex-religious affairs сhief: DESS fails to convince world of religious freedom

Viktor Bondarenko. Photo: screenshot from the DNK YouTube channel

The State Service of Ukraine for Ethnopolitics and Freedom of Conscience (DESS) is making no effort to establish dialogue with the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and is instead limiting itself to assuring Western partners that Ukraine has no problems with religious freedom. This is the view of religious scholar, Doctor of Philosophy and former chairman of Ukraine’s State Committee for Religious Affairs Viktor Bondarenko, who spoke in an interview with priest Roman Makar on the DNK YouTube channel.

“DESS is not initiating negotiations. The most it does is advocate for Ukraine’s position internationally. But how can we convince people that everything is fine here when we see so many things that are not fine? The whole world sees them. You can’t cover them up,” Bondarenko said.

According to him, trips to the United States aimed at “drilling it into someone’s head” that “everything is okay” in Ukraine are getting nowhere today. The former official said he would like the DESS leadership to draw up a “scenario model” showing where its current policy toward the UOC could ultimately lead. “The direction things are going today leads nowhere,” he said.

The expert also criticized efforts to push the UOC out of the public sphere. In particular, Church representatives are not even invited to meetings of the All-Ukrainian Council of Churches and Religious Organizations.

“The Council of Churches was effectively established while I was in office. How can such a large Church as the UOC be excluded from its work? Why do we talk about unity while deliberately creating division here? These are mistakes by the state,” he said.
Bondarenko also spoke out against the principle of collective responsibility. He noted that collaborators had been found in the Security Service of Ukraine, the police, among teachers and among government officials, yet no one was proposing that these institutions be banned.

“A specific individual bears individual responsibility. You cannot extend that responsibility to an entire institution,” he stressed, comparing the current approach to the deportation of the Crimean Tatars.

He also called the current system for granting clergy mobilization exemptions “absurd.” In his view, instead of this system, legislation should have been adopted providing for non-military alternative service for UOC priests.

As the UOJ reported, DESS head Viktor Yelenskyi has said that Ukraine is a model of religious freedom and that religious freedom in the country “is not a slogan – it has been put into practice.”

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