The long-running battle over the formation in Ukraine of a united Orthodox church is becoming increasingly bitter. Secular authorities around the country have started transferring churches and monasteries—including the country’s holiest site, the historic Kyiv-Pechersk cave monastery—over from the branch of the Orthodox church affiliated with Moscow to one that is not.
The wartime Ukrainian government has neither the time nor the patience to wait for the clergy to settle their centuries-old squabbles themselves. The state is forcing them to stand up and be counted, and any loyalty to Moscow—even the most theoretical—is becoming unacceptable.
Historical ties with Moscow had long prevented the formation of a unified national church in Ukraine. Instead, two main churches were locked in a battle of rivals: the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate (UOCMP), which was established in 1990 as a self-governing church under the canonic jurisdiction of the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) and remains the biggest in Ukraine with about 12,000 parishes, and the Ukrainian Orthodox Church—Kyiv Patriarchate (UOCKP), set up in 1992 by Ukrainian clergy who sought independence from the ROC.
For many years, the UOCMP enjoyed the support of the Ukrainian government and businesses: its biggest benefactors at one time included former president Petro Poroshenko. But its rival UOCKP was always prepared to side with the secular authorities in any conflict with Moscow, which could not be said of the UOCMP, whose dual loyalty always made it the object of suspicion.
As relations between Ukraine and Russia deteriorated, the UOCKP saw its congregation grow. Even Ukrainians who were not particularly religious started identifying as members of the church on purely patriotic grounds.
Poroshenko tried to put an end to this long-standing church rivalry during his presidency in December 2018 with the formation of a new church, the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU), established under the jurisdiction of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople and granted autocephaly, or ecclesial independence. Though it was based on the UOCKP, it was expected that gradually, UOCMP congregations would join its ranks, and indeed, the OCU began to grow, albeit very slowly, with no suggestion it would outgrow the UOCMP any time soon.
The hard-fought presidential election of 2019 pushed the issue of the church onto a back burner, and President Volodymyr Zelensky showed little initial interest in a matter his predecessor Poroshenko had been at such pains to exploit. Then Russia invaded Ukraine, changing everything, and the squabbles over the church became a more sensitive subject than ever before.
Doubt had already been cast on the loyalty of UOCMP clergy following the annexation of Crimea and establishment of puppet regimes in the so-called Donetsk and Luhansk people’s republics back in 2014. The UOCMP’s official position was one of overall neutrality and opposition to bloodshed, but some of its rank-and-file clergy supported the new pro-Russian regimes through actions such as attending the inauguration of Luhansk People’s Republic head Igor Plotnitsky or refusing to move their dioceses from inside the occupied territory.
Following Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, the situation became untenable for Kyiv. Unlike in 2014, Patriarch Kirill, head of the Russian Orthodox Church, unambiguously threw his support behind Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war, and the biggest Orthodox church in Ukraine found itself effectively a branch of a hostile foreign body.
The UOCMP’s leadership has tried to distance itself from the aggressor country. The Kyiv Metropolitan Onufriy condemned Russia’s invasion, and on May 27, 2022, the UOC council declared independence from the ROC and entered into a dialogue with the OCU. Still, critics of the UOCMP have pointed out that there is no written confirmation of the break with Moscow, and in any case, these steps proved insufficient to silence the angry voices, especially since some of the church’s priests had openly sided with Russia.
Some left Ukraine together with retreating Russian troops, while clergy in the occupied Crimea and Donbas regions refused to recognize the council’s ruling on separating from the Moscow Patriarchate. One senior UOCMP clergyman even attended the ceremony held at the Kremlin to celebrate the announced annexation of four more Ukrainian regions. The church itself failed to denounce its collaborator priests, which only fanned the flames of tension.
The Ukrainian authorities responded by raiding churches and monasteries, and launching twenty-three criminal cases against UOCMP clergy. The country’s National Security Council has imposed sanctions on several members of the clergy in Crimea and the Donbas, as well as the head of the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra, and the church’s biggest benefactor, the oligarch Vadim Novinsky.
Hot on the heels of the sanctions, the government moved swiftly to take control of the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra, the country’s holiest site and the seat of the UOCMP. The Kyiv Patriarchate has long fought for the right to take possession of the cave monastery, but only now are the Ukrainian authorities prepared to openly support the OCU by trying to evict the UOCMP from the territory of the historic monastery. The monastery’s divisive abbot, Metropolitan Pavel (nicknamed Pasha Mercedes for his luxury lifestyle) is under house arrest on suspicion of inciting religious hatred and justifying Russian aggression.
The escalation of the conflict over Ukraine’s churches creates a difficult problem for the Ukrainian government. On the one hand, it cannot show any weakness in the face of entities affiliated with Moscow, and there is a lot of pressure from the outraged public to stamp out any treachery at a time of war. There are also hawks within government who would like to see the pro-Moscow church closed down for good, and a bill has already been submitted to the Ukrainian parliament that would completely ban the UOCMP in Ukraine.
On the other hand, the last thing Kyiv needs right now is a second war. In Ukraine’s southeast, the UOCMP is still influential and remains the go-to church for Russian speakers. Orthodox leaders in Serbia and Georgia have condemned what they see as the persecution of their brothers in Kyiv, which plays into Kremlin propaganda. International organizations have also expressed concern over the raids of places of worship. Moreover, each Orthodox parish is an individual legal entity, which makes banning the UOC altogether a complicated task. Accordingly, the Ukrainian government is trying to tread carefully and leave the justice system to deal with the UOCMP.
Russia’s invasion dealt a heavy blow to the UOC’s position. In 2021, 18 percent of religious Ukrainians polled identified as members of that church, while in July 2022 that number was just 4 percent. In the same period, the number of those who identify as members of the OCU has risen from 34 percent to 54 percent. On the other hand, the UOC is still estimated to have about 12,000 congregations in Ukraine, compared with the OCU’s 7,600.
Regardless of numbers, it’s obvious that the UOC will never be able to return to its prewar position, just like the pro-Russian political parties. There are only two options now: swear allegiance to the new national consensus or become a pro-Kremlin collaborator.
The heavy-handed persecution of UOC members runs the risk of creating martyrs and even a religious underground hostile to the state and prepared to cooperate with Moscow. Accordingly, the least painful outcome would be to incorporate all UOC entities into a unified national OCU via an inter-church dialogue.
That’s easier said than done, however, not least because of canon law. The OCU is not permitted to operate outside of Ukraine’s borders: that was one of the terms of it becoming autocephalous. The UOC, meanwhile, has its own churches and parishes across Europe, which are currently focused on offering assistance to the multitude of Ukrainian refugees who have fled there.
It’s also important to remember that despite individual cases of clergy and churchgoers siding with Russia, most priests and members of the UOC are loyal to Ukraine. The church has lent its support to the Ukrainian army and refugees since the beginning of the war, and was involved in organizing humanitarian corridors to besieged Mariupol. Turning all of the church’s supporters into outcasts would be counterproductive for the state. Thanks to its support for Putin’s war, the ROC needs no help in making itself abhorrent to Ukraine’s Orthodox believers.
There is also an important lesson for the OCU in the fall from grace of the Moscow Patriarchate. Gaining sovereignty by severing ties with Moscow is not in itself enough for the Ukrainian church; it must carve out a new place for itself in society. So far, the new Ukrainian church has all too often demonstrated the same flaws as the old one, not to mention the dangerous temptation its current proximity to the authorities could prove to be. The government, for its part, should not forget that Ukraine is a secular state.
