As war continues, Ukrainian Orthodox Church investigated for Russian ties

A Ukrainian agency announced last month an investigation into whether the Kyiv Metropolia of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church shows signs of affiliation with a foreign religious organization whose activities are banned in Ukraine. As the investigation gets underway, a Ukrainian Orthodox Church metropolitan is taking pains to distance the Church he leads from Moscow.

Metropolitan Onufriy of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. Credit: Vadim Chuprina/wikimedia. CC BY SA 4.0

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The investigation, announced May 17 by Ukraine’s State Service for Ethnic Policy and Freedom of Conscience (DESS) comes in response to the 2024 “Law on the Protection of the Constitutional Order in the Activities of Religious Organizations,” which prohibits the activities of the Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine.

Lawmakers who supported the measure described the Russian Orthodox Church as “an accomplice to war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in the name of the Russian Federation and the ideology of the ‘Russky Mir.’”

But while the law does not mention any Ukrainian religious body explicitly, it could affect those found to be affiliated with Russian ecclesiastical hierarchies. And since the law was passed, DESS has developed a serious of subordinate policies — now approved by the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine—which lay out how the law will be applied in practice.

Vyacheslav Horshkov, head of DESS’s religious affairs department, told The Pillar that an inquiry into the UOCs Kyiv Metropolia is based on a May 2025 Cabinet resolution which laid out a framework for investigating Ukrainian religious groups.

“We’re currently at the stage of gathering and reviewing documents,” Horshkov said.

“The law lists seven criteria for determining affiliation, and we need to evaluate the specific religious organization according to them. In this case, it concerns the Kyiv Metropolia of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, because the resolution stipulates that DESS conducts the inquiry taking into account the hierarchical structure of the religious association. Therefore, it makes sense to start not from the bottom, but from the top of the religious structure. If signs of affiliation are found, the religious organization will receive a directive from DESS, and then, as they say, the ball will be in their court.”

According to the Ukrainian law, a religious organization might be considered affiliated with a banned foreign religious body if it is structurally part of or connected to that body; if its official documents or statutes indicate such affiliation; if the foreign organization’s documents show the Ukrainian body is part of its structure or subject to its canonical or administrative decisions; if it requires Ukrainian clerics to participate in its governing bodies; if it influences the Ukrainian organization’s management through canonical or administrative subordination; if it appoints, approves, or blesses the organization’s leaders; or if it authorizes the organization’s statutes.

If the UOC’s Kyiv metropolitan is found by the investigation to be formally affiliated with the Russian Orthodox Church, it will be legally required to terminate that affiliation, which requires clarity in its own statutes about lines of authority.

“A religious organization has a defined structure, with specific procedures for making decisions,” Horshkov explained. “So if someone without sufficient authority announces something and says, ‘We’ve fulfilled the directive,’ that won’t be enough. We rely on the organization’s own statutes, which identifies the body responsible for making key decisions on behalf of the entire religious association. Your personal statement is your statement—but within your structure, such a decision must be made by a synod, a council, or another governing body. Only then will it be considered legitimate, in accordance with your own statutes.”

According to Horshkov, a process of disaffiliation itself could take up to three more months.

“First of all,” he explained, “if the organization says, ‘Well, the directive gives us 30 days to address this, but we need more time—we can’t convene a council that quickly,’ they can request an extension of up to 60 more days.”

“So in total, they effectively have 90 days—three months—to resolve the issue. If they comply, provide us with documentation, and it satisfies us, the matter is closed. There will be no further questions to the religious organization.”

“But if they say no, or simply fail to comply—and it’s obvious, it’s not something that requires interpretation—then we will officially declare that this religious organization is affiliated with the banned foreign religious body. Once that designation is made, we have the legal right to file a court petition for the removal of its legal entity status. We submit the lawsuit, and from that point on, the matter moves into the judicial system and is handled by another branch of government.”

Ukraine’s laws on religious affiliation have garnered criticism from religious freedom advocates, who say that religious liberty should allow for ecclesial affiliations between Ukrainian Orthodox bishops and the Russian Orthodox Church.

Horshkov, for his part, offered another perspective:

“The law includes provisions that, at the foundational level, fully guarantee freedom of conscience. For example, under the Law on Freedom of Conscience and Religious Organizations, there is a very interesting clause: religious communities may exist without registration and are not even required to notify the state of their existence. A group may hold very unusual religious beliefs, but as long as they gather peacefully and do not violate any laws—for instance, as long as they’re not making human sacrifices—then it’s entirely permissible. Ukraine has never had a case where a religious organization was banned, and I hope that won’t happen in this case either.”

Summing up, Horshkov said: “It’s clear that the situation is stressful—undeniably so. But stress, as a concept, can serve as a catalyst for action. We hope that, ultimately… Because this stress affects religious organizations, and it also affects government institutions. It’s a serious challenge.

“But I personally haven’t lost hope that everything will be resolved in the best way possible—and that the final decision will not result in a ban.”

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Almost simultaneously with the announcement from DESS, Metropolitan Onufriy, head of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, issued a statement that appears to be his most far-reaching yet in asserting the Church’s independence from Moscow.

The statement echoes many of the declarations made during the 2022 Council in Feofania, which resolved to remove all references to ties with the Moscow Patriarchate from the UOC’s statutes, except for a mention of a 1990 decree issued by Patriarch Alexy II of Moscow.

In his latest message, Metropolitan Onufriy, without using the term "autocephaly," repeatedly emphasized that the Feofania Council had declared the Church’s "full canonical independence" and distanced itself from the Moscow Patriarchate.

He also delivered sharp criticism of Patriarch Kirill of Moscow, stating that “since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, Patriarch Kirill has fully sided with the Russian political leadership and has consistently justified the military aggression against Ukraine.”

While much of the statement reiterated earlier positions, it also introduced new elements.

Metropolitan Onufriy stated that he had “terminated his membership in the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church” and expressed hope that “the family of Autocephalous Local Churches will support us morally, acknowledge our canonical independence, and honor it appropriately.”

These new elements echoed a letter written a year earlier by Viktor Yelenskyi, head of DESS, in response to an inquiry from the UOC Metropolia.

In that letter, Yelenskyi outlined steps he believed the Church should take to demonstrate its independence from Moscow. Among them were an official withdrawal from ROC governing bodies and a formal appeal to Local Churches explaining the circumstances and the rationale behind the break with the Russian Orthodox Church.

Commenting to The Pillar, Volodymyr Bureha, Vice-Rector for Academic Affairs at the Kyiv Theological Academy of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC), said that Metropolitan Onufriy’s recent public statement distancing the UOC from the Moscow Patriarchate was not a reaction to the State Service for Ethnopolitics and Freedom of Conscience’s investigation.

Instead, the message had first been voiced during a roundtable on May 20, marking the third anniversary of the 2022 Council at Feofania.

According to Bureha, the event gathered nine UOC bishops, representatives from theological institutions, and DESS official Vyacheslav Horshkov. So the participants had the opportunity to ask questions to the representative of the state body.

“I would say that the conversation was quite constructive,” he noted, “because the problem is that we unfortunately don’t have any regular constructive communication (with the state)—what we have instead is more of a confrontation. So my hope, and what I would really like to see, is the beginning of such communication. I hope it will develop in the context of the upcoming inspection of the Metropolia.”

Bureha noted that the primary audience for Metropolitan Onufriy’s remarks was the broader UOC public. The message sought to offer an interpretation of what had happened in 2022, now with greater clarity. “I didn’t hear anything substantially new,” Bureha said. “The only difference is that previously, Metropolitan Onufriy had voiced similar ideas only in private conversations and letters.”

Still, the statement likely had a second, indirect audience: the Ukrainian state. “By the time of this event, it was already known that DESS would be inspecting the metropolia,” Bureha said.

“So I think that a new audience for this message was also the state.”

Addressing terminology, Bureha clarified: “I wasn’t a participant of the 2022 Council. I only read its decisions afterward. So I can’t say what the atmosphere was like when the resolutions were adopted. But I understand that the word “autocephaly” was deliberately avoided by the metropolitan. That was intentional. And in fact, during the roundtable, Metropolitan Onufriy explicitly said that we are trying to stay within the canonical bounds and therefore avoid drastic moves.”

“The thing is,” Bureha continued, “If a Church proclaims autocephaly, that’s a red flag for all the other Orthodox Churches. It immediately becomes grounds for at least suspending relations until the situation becomes clear. So the approach that Metropolitan Onufriy seems to have taken, and which he articulated more clearly in his recent address, is that: ‘We see ourselves as independent. Without using the word autocephaly, we are not the Moscow Patriarchate. We are not dependent on any other local Church. And we hope that other Churches will support us in this.’

Still, Bureha said, “Metropolitan had likened autocephaly to a doctoral degree: you cannot simply award it to yourself—it must be conferred by others. He sees it as a kind of distinction, a recognition that should come from the other local Churches.”

“As far as I know, there hasn’t been any formal requests to other Churches,” Bureha said. “But given the careful wording in the statement, which hints at a desire to reach some understanding with the other local Churches, that possibility might be under consideration. Still, I haven’t heard anything specific. If such outreach had occurred, it would have been public—and we would already have seen either a response or a reaction. Since that hasn’t happened, we can conclude that no such outreach has taken place. I’ve seen two or three documents addressed to various state agencies. This is now the third one in which Metropolitan Onufriy states that he has ended his membership in the Moscow Patriarchate’s Synod. How exactly he did this, or whether he officially informed them—I don’t know. There have been no public documents.”

At the same time Bureha suggested that a statement from the UOC’s governing synod would have had far greater impact. “If the Holy Synod had issued the same statement that Metropolitan Onufriy just made—word for word—it would have carried more weight,” he said. “It would have been an official resolution of the UOC, not just the primate’s personal address.”

Looking ahead, Bureha stressed the importance of dialogue with the state: “It is now absolutely crucial for the UOC to establish proper communication with DESS. Because if DESS issues an official directive tomorrow, that’s a turning point. The situation escalates. The Church would need to make changes. Otherwise, it’s off to the courts—and you know how that goes. The process just keeps escalating.”

Volodymyr Bureha acknowledged that there is still some opposition within the UOC to the direction taken by Metropolitan Onufriy. However, he believes the Church has passed a point of no return in terms of its internal identity and consciousness.

“If three years ago, even such a decision was a shock for many within the UOC, now we have lived in this reality for three years,” Bureha said. “So, I think that opposition has become weaker and smaller, in my view.”

Still, there is some opposition to the UOC’s turn away from Moscow.

The UOC’s chancellor, Metropolitan Antony Pakanych, has in recent weeks referenced a decision by Ukraine’s Orthodox bishops three decades ago to reject autocephaly, and instead to reaffirm the Church’s unity with Moscow. Pakanych is widely regarded as the leader of a small pro-Russian wing within the UOC.

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As the investigation gets underway, some outside observers are skeptical that the state investigation of the UOC will develop constructively.

Andriy Smyrnov, professor of Church history from Ostroh Academy National University, told The Pillar that he sees Metropolitan Onufriy’s statement is another attempt to stall and buy time.

“Maybe they’ll manage to hold out until a ceasefire (in the war), and then it might be possible to expect that the question of this church’s fate in Ukraine will be frozen, at least during the negotiations. Perhaps the Ukrainian authorities will see the ‘statement’ as a gesture of goodwill, and the verdict — that is, the ban of the Kyiv Metropolia — will be postponed a bit longer. But this is not enough for either the state or society, which expect a real break with Moscow, not just ritual phrases about independence or distancing from the ROC.”

Smyrnov emphasized that no resolution on the case should be expected soon, given the tendency of judicial processes in Ukraine to stall, sometimes for years.