What is a rule of law state in the view of "religious experts"?
Here is a small but illustrative discussion between the user "Leonid" and Yuriy Chernomorets. Yura often acts as a "religious expert" and was one of the authors of the "expertise" in 2023 for the State Service for Ethnopolitics and Freedom of Conscience (GESS) on the status of the UOC.
Not long ago, Yura systematically stated that all UOC bishops without exception should be arrested and exchanged for "Azov" members as part of the prisoner exchange between Ukraine and Russia.
Now Yura has slightly "softened" his demands and stated that all UOC bishops should simply be taken and deported from the country. Further recount of the discussion in essence; see the original of this public correspondence in the screenshots (apologies for referencing the vulgar Telegram channel "Veselyi Pip"; please do not consider this an advertisement for it).
Leonid's objection: International treaties prohibit forcibly deporting people from the countries of which they are citizens; the Constitution of Ukraine (Article 25) explicitly prohibits expelling Ukrainian citizens from the country.
Chernomorets: A number of bishops have already been stripped of Ukrainian citizenship, so all other UOC hierarchs should simply be deprived of citizenship and then expelled.
Leonid: The Constitution (Article 25) explicitly prohibits depriving Ukrainian citizens of their Ukrainian citizenship (my note: The Law "On Citizenship of Ukraine" in Article 19 provides for the possibility of "loss" of Ukrainian citizenship, but only in cases where a person voluntarily - not automatically - becomes a citizen of another state or voluntarily joins a foreign army).
Chernomorets: Then all UOC bishops should be convicted and exchanged for prisoners (that is, we return to the old plan: arrest everyone, try them, convict them, exchange them).
Leonid: In Ukraine, the presumption of innocence applies, and the guilt of each of them must be proven in court (Constitution, Article 62).
Chernomorets: Any UOC bishop can be arrested and convicted, it just takes the desire to do so ("if desired, guilt is easily proven in court"); on the contrary, the criminal inaction of the Ukrainian state is that the UOC episcopate is still at large. Mere deportation of all bishops without arrest and trial is a soft option, "rotten humanism," since in reality they should all be imprisoned, convicted, and then exchanged for prisoners of war (my note: there is a clear contradiction here, as a Ukrainian citizen convicted by a Ukrainian court, but not deprived of citizenship, cannot be handed over to another country and must serve the sentence in Ukraine itself).
Leonid: If convicting an entire group of people requires only someone's "desire" to do so, it means legal lawlessness. In such a case, neither courts, nor the legal system, nor the constitution are needed.
No objection followed.
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And these people speak in the media as "religious experts"...
They write "expert opinions" for the State Service for Freedom of Conscience...
