Traditionally, since 1991, Ukraine has been among the countries where there were no global and systematic problems in the field of religious freedom. It did not fall into the lists of violators of freedom of conscience. However, the war, especially its acute stage, which began on Feb. 24, 2022, significantly affected the state of religious freedom, giving rise to a number of challenges in this area.
So what is happening with religious freedom in Ukraine? Is religious freedom decreasing in Ukraine? YES, religious freedom in Ukraine is decreasing. The field of its action directly depends on the disposition of the Russian and Ukrainian armies at the front. As soon as the Russians seize new settlements, the territory of freedom, including religious freedom, decreases.
The general position of Ukraine as a state regarding religious freedom, as well as freedom of conscience, has not changed since 1991. This is stated in the Constitution (1996) and the basic Law on Freedom of Conscience and Religious Organizations (1991). The implementation of these legislative acts, as well as international documents, in particular the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), has established religious pluralism in the country, and has actually created conditions for freedom of religion for both individuals and communities.
Over 30,000 religious organizations are registered in Ukraine
Thanks to Ukraine’s promotion and guarantee of freedom of conscience, more than 30,000 religious organizations are registered and operating now. Ukrainian statistics record the presence of religious communities in Ukraine of about 100 directions – Christians, Orthodox, Catholics and Protestants, but there are also Jews, Muslims, Buddhists and modern religions.
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The majority are Orthodox Christians (about 70% by self-identification), who belong to two Orthodox churches – the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) and the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU). These two Orthodox churches are the result of the evolution of the Ukrainian Exarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church, which emerged in the early 1990s as a response to the need of a part of the faithful to maintain their unity with the Moscow Patriarchate or to become independent from Moscow and create their own autocephalous Orthodox Church.
After the long perturbations experienced by these two Orthodox churches, Ukrainian Orthodoxy found itself divided between the Moscow (UOC) and Ecumenical (OCU) Patriarchates.
As of Jan. 1, 2024, 8,295 communities of the OCU and 10,919 communities of the UOC-MP were registered in Ukraine. Ukrainian legislation does not provide for official registration of believers, so statistics do not calculate their number. However, based on sociological surveys, we see a trend of a decrease in the number of UOC believers to 4% and an increase in the number of OCU believers to 54% (2022).
Religious life in Ukraine has undergone significant changes during wartime. The conditions under which believers, including Orthodox Christians, can practice their religion are fundamentally different in the territories controlled by the Ukrainian government and in the territories temporarily occupied by Russia.
Religious life in the temporarily occupied territories
Religious life in the temporarily occupied territories that formally belong to Ukraine – Crimea, Donetsk Luhansk, part of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions – can be characterized along several dimensions: legal, ideological and practical.
1) Under Russian occupation, the rules, principles, and guarantees provided for by Ukraine’s Constitution and its Law on Freedom of Conscience and Religious Organizations do not apply. Religious life is organized according to the laws of the Russian Federation or the so-called People’s Republics, with all its usual restrictions, confessional priorities, and subordination to secular authorities. In these territories, religious communities that Russia does not like are banned or have their rights restricted, examples being Jehovah’s Witnesses, the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, Mormons, Scientologists, some Protestant churches and Muslim movements. Communities are fined; their places of worship are nationalized; religious literature is confiscated and burned; and believers are persecuted, arrested, tried, and sent to prison or penal colonies. People can be sentenced to more than 10 years for their faith.
2) Residents of the occupied territories are under strong ideological pressure. Due to the ban on alternative sources of information, the “values” of the Russian world are imposed on people through state media, attempting to persuade them that Russia has been called to save Ukraine, all of Europe, and the whole world from sinfulness, from Nazis, and from fascists. At the same time, Russia dresses in the toga of a fighter for human rights, and for freedoms, only understanding these rights and freedoms in its own specific way – the “Russian way.”
3) Russia does not simply misinform about the state of freedom, but it actually strangles this freedom.
Kidnappings, torture and extra-judicial executions of priests and believers of various churches have accompanied Russian aggression against Ukraine since 2014. Believers are forced to pray privately or meet secretly. Religious freedom has been destroyed. Since Feb. 24, 2022, Russia’s attacks on freedom of religion in Ukraine have become increasingly brutal.
The occupation authorities are trying to take control of all religious activity, force religious communities to submit to Russian religious centers, persuade pro-Ukrainian religious figures to cooperate, resorting to threats and torture. For example when the 59-year-old Stepan Podolchak, the priest from the Orthodox Church of Ukraine in the village of Kalanchak in the Kherson region, refused to convert to the Russian Orthodox Church, the Russian invaders recently tortured him to death.
On June 28, 2024, after two years of captivity, two priests, Ivan Levytskyi and Bohdan Geleta, were released - after having been imprisoned because of their affiliation with the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church.
Russia is silent about all these very real violations in the sphere of freedom of conscience. Moreover, it actively promotes other narratives – about the persecution of Orthodox Christians, аbout the ban of Orthodoxy in Ukraine, in particular the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC).
The situation in the territories controlled by Ukraine
The most acute topic in the field of freedom of religion is the issue of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC). Responding to the security challenges associated with the presence of pro-Russian religious organizations in Ukraine, in early 2023 the Cabinet of Ministers introduced draft law No. 8371, which aims to limit the activities of hostile church administrative centers in Ukraine.
This draft law was immediately called by UOC the Law on the Prohibition of the UOC, although the text never mentions either the UOC or any other religious organization. The UOC organized powerful opposition to the adoption of the law in both the legal and information spheres. Aggressive criticism of the draft law took various forms: lawsuits in the courts, letters to the UN, appeals to church leaders, to interreligious organizations, where it was claimed that the UOC is a martyred church persecuted for its faith in Ukraine. The famous American lawyer Robert Amsterdam was invited to prove the illegality of the law. The “UOC case” has grown from an internal Ukrainian case into a global one, as it has entered the international arena.
Taking full responsibility for possible threats to freedom of religion in Ukraine and agreeing with some of the reservations of foreign experts, Ukrainian scientists and officials respond in a reasoned and measured manner to some of the overly alarming sentiments of foreign colleagues. They explain that the state initiates criminal cases not against the church or priests, bishops or monks, but against a citizen of Ukraine for illegal, and in this case anti-state actions (treason, incitement of interreligious hostility, causing harm to human life and health, etc.). The state is not concerned with the citizen’s faith; it is interested in anti-social actions that are provoked by a certain religious system of values.
Is everything perfect with freedom of religion in the territory of Ukraine controlled by the Ukrainian authorities? No, there are problems, but the fundamental rights of believers and religious communities are ensured, religious freedoms are guaranteed. The existence in Ukraine of religious organizations that threaten state security, while maintaining ties with their administrative centers located on the territory of the aggressor country, required a response from the state.
Special Law 8371, which limited the activities of such religious institutions, was written in early 2023, but only in the summer of 2024 was it adopted as the Law of Ukraine “On the Protection of the Constitutional Order in the Sphere of Activities of Religious Organizations” No. 3894–IX. The Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine voted for this law on Aug. 20, 2024 by 265 people’s deputies (229 votes out of 400 are enough to pass laws). The Law was signed by the President of Ukraine and entered into force on Sept. 23, 2024.
Currently, no changes have occurred in the religious life of Ukraine in the territory controlled by Ukraine, since it was not the UOC that was banned, but the Russian Orthodox Church as a foreign structure, the center of which is Moscow. The key word in the Law is not “ban” or “persecution,” but “investigation.”
The state, represented by the State Service for Ethnopolitics and Freedom of Conscience, will investigate the connection of religious organizations of Ukraine with the aggressor country. Moreover, this applies not only to the Orthodox. If sufficient evidence is received, the fate of this organization will be decided by the court and only the court.
We take into account the generally expected concern of the world community regarding the state of freedom of conscience in Ukraine, but we insist that experts do not always see the full picture. Their assessments of the state of religious freedom in Ukraine are still out of context.
Without being in the war itself, without feeling anti-Russian sentiments within society, experts feed only on information from secondary sources, someone’s subjective observations. It is necessary to see the entire set of circumstances that determine certain actions of the state, church or society. The principle of legal normativity, which proceeds from the absolute priority of individual human rights, even of a criminal who threatens an entire community of such subjects of legal relations, does not work under certain real conditions - you cannot obey the law when the barrel of an automatic rifle is pointed at your head.
The situation with freedom of religion in Ukraine concerns not only Ukraine. Russia’s military aggression against Ukrainian religious freedom endangers any country when a totalitarian aggressor, in our case Russia, invades sovereign territory. Where Putin is, there religious freedom ends. The Ukrainian state is not interested in aggravating state-church relations but cannot allow the presence on its territory of agents of the “Russian world” – those who fight against an independent and sovereign state, especially in wartime. Ukraine has always been and is now, even during war, a supporter of freedoms and human rights. It is currently defending them in an open struggle against the Russian invader.
By Dr Liudmyla Fylypovych, (*) Doctor of religious studies, Professor Philosophy Institute of National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine.
This article has been republished from HRWF (Human Rights Without Frontiers). The original can be seen here.
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