Even during a war, it is so difficult to resolve the issue “in one fell swoop”
A year and a half has passed since Ukraine began to develop a law banning the Russian Orthodox Church and its branch in Ukraine (operating under the brand of the UOC). We are talking about a bill changing the regulation of the activities of religious organizations in Ukraine (No. 8371). The document passed the first round of parliamentary hearings in October 2023, and then stalled in debates between the Committee on Humanitarian and Information Policy and specialists from the State Service for Ethnopolitics and Freedom of Conscience (GESS). During this time, 1,200 amendments were made to the document and, as experts say, this is a completely different law, albeit with an old number. Despite this, even with the edits, its edition does not suit the parties involved.
Obviously, not only experts, but also a certain part of deputies consider the text vulnerable, because there are not enough votes to approve it in the second reading in the Rada. Speaker of Parliament Ruslan Stefanchuk, in response to reproaches about blocking the “ban of the Russian Orthodox Church and UOC-MP,” made a cunning knight move: he stated that the document would be submitted to parliament for the second reading as soon as the deputies completed collecting signatures in support of this law.
Stefanchuk perfectly understands all the internal conflicts on this issue, so he has easily abdicated responsibility from himself for a long time.
It got to the point that one of the most active providers of the ban on the UOC-MP, a member of the relevant committee of the Rada, Nikolai Knyazhitsky, accused the State Service for Ethnopolitics not only of slowing down the bill through more and more amendments to it, but even of trying to “legalize the activities of the church of Patriarch Kirill on the territory of Ukraine , further endowing it with a status that no other church or religious organization has.” According to deputy Knyazhitsky, there is now a big PR campaign of the Russian Church so that this law is not adopted. And the instrument in her hands, according to the politician, is “some of ours who sing along with them.” One of such structures, according to the logic of the deputy’s statements, is the State Service for Ethnopolitics and Freedom of Conscience. Oddly enough, the oppositionist Knyazhitsky is supported in this by the people’s deputy from the “Servant of the People” Oleg Dunda. He directly accuses the head of the Civil Service, Viktor Yelensky, of slowing down the process. “On the one hand, he (Elensky - “Commander in Chief”) understands that it is necessary to eliminate the influence of the Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine. On the other hand, he is afraid, because there are different views on the Ukrainian church issue in the world. Therefore, he tries to make decisions so that he is not blamed for it,” explains Dunda. The deputy also complains that Yelensky has not spoken publicly on this issue over the past year.
The civil service, represented by Viktor Yelensky, for its part, rejects all these accusations and complains about the unprofessional approaches of the committee members themselves.
The “Commander in Chief” looked into what conflicts the draft law contained and why it was so difficult to “with one stroke of the saber” stop the activities of the Moscow Church in Ukraine. We were able to talk with Viktor Yelensky, whom deputies accuse of being overly cautious and unwilling to publicly communicate the topic of the scandalous bill.
Fundamental Misunderstandings
The key discrepancy in the positions of the Parliamentary Committee on Humanitarian and Information Policy and the State Service on Ethnopolitics and Freedom of Conscience is a different understanding of the purpose of the law.
If deputies see it as their mission to ban the activities of the hostile Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine, which threatens national security, then the Civil Service considers the legislative ban itself inappropriate and its inconsistency with international law. If the law is adopted, it should have a practical effect, but if the currently proposed text is approved, this is a problem, says Viktor Yelensky, Chairman of the Civil Service, Doctor of Psychology and religious scholar.
Now the main proposals of the Civil Service are that the reference to paragraph 2 of Articles 9 and 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights should be removed from the preamble of the bill. They speak, in particular, about under what circumstances the state can restrict the freedoms of citizens.
According to the chairman of the committee, Nikita Poturaev, the reference in the preamble to the mentioned articles will indicate that Ukraine considers the activities of the Russian Orthodox Church a threat to national, state and public security. And if we abandon references to the Convention, the law will become many times more vulnerable to appeals to the European Court of Human Rights, the deputy is sure.
The head of the State Service for Ethnopolitics, Viktor Yelensky, objects. He convinces: the mentioned articles of the Convention only highlight the grounds that can serve to restrict human rights. The official advises to turn to the comments of the Main Legal Department of the Verkhovna Rada, which Poturaev’s committee ignores.
“... Neither the Constitution of Ukraine and the European Convention on Human Rights, to which the bill refers, nor the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which also protects these freedoms, which, however, is not mentioned in the text of the draft, provide for the possibility of limiting the right to freedom conscience, religion and association in religious organizations in the interests of national security,” note lawyers of the Verkhovna Rada. “Thus, according to the second part of Article 35 of the Constitution of Ukraine, the exercise of this right can be limited by law only in the interests of protecting and defending human rights.
Legalize parishes of the Moscow Church?
The deputies also took very seriously the proposal not to extend the ban on the activities of the Russian Orthodox Church “to hierarchically subordinate structural units of the Russian Orthodox Church on the territory of Ukraine, namely: to religious organizations (as legal entities) in Ukraine, formed and registered in accordance with the legislation of Ukraine with a seat in Ukraine.” In other words, the State Service proposed not to consider numerous parishes of the Moscow Church in Ukraine, which are registered under Ukrainian laws, as parts of the Russian Orthodox Church.
This initiative was harshly criticized by People's Deputy Nikolai Knyazhitsky. “According to the proposal of the State Service of Ethnopolitics, our state should legalize the activities of the Church of Patriarch Kirill on its territory, additionally giving it a status that no other church or religious organization has. How did such an outrage against the Ukrainian state become possible in the 11th year of the Russian-Ukrainian war?” Knyazhitsky wrote emotionally on his Facebook page.
It is noteworthy that the deputy came out with criticism in June, while the proposals were formed and sent back in March, and already in May the Civil Service abandoned them. Moreover, the leadership of the Civil Service denies exactly this interpretation of these proposals by Deputy Knyazhitsky. To the question: why put on public display the proposal of the Civil Service, which she herself refused, Knyazhitsky answered like this: they say, the Civil Service sends different proposals all the time. “They refused some proposals, but we agreed with them on some. But this dialogue (between deputies and the State Service for Ethnopolitics) continues,” Nikolai Knyazhitsky said in a conversation with “Commander-in-Chief.”
Viktor Yelensky, in a comment to the “Glavkom”, interprets the mentioned initiative as follows: the point was that the structures (associated with the Russian Orthodox Church) should be subject to the judicial procedure, because now there is no clarity in the committee version of the bill. Yelensky also notes that the current committee version of the bill talks about banning only religious organizations or structures affiliated with the Russian Orthodox Church, but in one of the previous versions of the bill it was said that those organizations and related structures that have centers of influence should be banned in Russia. In other words, if a religious organization associated with Russia, but not associated with the Russian Orthodox Church, operates in Ukraine, the law will not apply to it if it is approved in the current version.
“In general, religious organizations are not banned in Europe. They are banned by the court. And for that matter: which ROC are the deputies banning when it de jure does not exist in Ukraine? There is no Russian Orthodox Church in the Unified State Register of Legal Entities,” Yelensky is indignant.
Do not allow preachers into Ukraine
Another proposed change concerned the conditions for the admission of foreign preachers and clergy to Ukraine. They, according to the proposal of the Civil Service, could “engage in preaching religious teachings, performing religious rituals or other canonical activities only in those religious organizations at the invitation of which they arrived, and with official agreement with the state body that registered the charter (regulations) of the relevant religious organization "
This proposal, at first glance, seemed fair. Suffice it to recall the visit to Ukraine on June 1, 2024 of the Archbishop of Washington, Metropolitan of All America and Canada Tikhon, who arrived at the invitation of the branch of the Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine, which caused a public outcry. How did it happen that during a full-scale war, a person who could be a Russian agent freely comes to Ukraine, albeit with an American passport? The amendments proposed by the State Service for Ethnic Policy and Freedom of Conscience would make it possible to avoid such visits or at least make them as difficult as possible.
But the relevant committee called for rejecting such changes. They say that this norm is unnecessary and harmful, since it concerns not Russia and the Russian Orthodox Church, but all foreign priests and even believers. “If now the claims of Americans or Europeans to our bill are far-fetched, then after the implementation of such a norm they will be fair. The state should not regulate the activities of priests or believers to such an extent, because then this is not freedom of conscience,” says a comment on behalf of the Committee on the proposals of the Civil Service.
Don’t step on the “Moldavian rake”
Viktor Yelensky notes that the adoption of the law without comments from the Civil Service specialists on issues of ethnopolitics and freedom of conscience could harm Ukraine.
Our state may fall on the same rake that once hit Moldova. This state tried to protect itself from the influence of the Romanian Church. However, the European Court of Human Rights in the case “Church of the Metropolitan Church of Bessarabia and others v. Moldova” dated December 13, 2001 forced the Moldovan government to concede. Themis recognized the Bessarabian Metropolis as part of the Romanian Orthodox Church in Moldova, which at that time was confidently dominated by the Moldavian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate. The court decisions directly indicated that national security is not a basis for narrowing religious freedom, Yelensky emphasizes.
When to expect the law
The law must be effective and comply with the obligations that Ukraine assumed upon joining the Council of Europe, insists Yelensky. The bill contains many norms, to which there are comments from the State Service for Ethnopolitics, but it is ready to concede. “We offer a compromise. We agree to leave the “ban on the Russian Orthodox Church” as they want... we leave the ban on the “Russian world”. But Alexander Nevsky is also a symbol of the “Russian world”. There will be a scandal, because a dozen churches consecrated in the name of Nevsky moved from the Moscow Patriarchate to the OCU. So will this be propaganda of the “Russian world” or not?” the official asks a rhetorical question.
It remains unclear to him how the law will operate, since there are no legally balanced definitions of the concepts of the Russian Orthodox Church, “Russian World,” or “propaganda of the Russian World” in the document. At least in the version that is now in the parliamentary committee.
“Given the existing decision of the Constitutional Court (in December 2022, the Constitutional Court recognized as constitutional the requirement to change the name of the UOC-MP indicating its affiliation with Russia), I do not understand at all what we are discussing further,” the head of the parliamentary committee Nikita Poturaev emotionally comments. The deputy said in a conversation with “Commander in Chief” that the committee is not inclined to compromise on key issues with the Civil Service, although work on the bill and the study of expert proposals will continue after the trip of Ukrainian deputies to the PACE meeting, that is, next month. In his opinion, in July the draft law will be submitted for final consideration to the Verkhovna Rada.
Meanwhile, the parliamentary faction of the European Solidarity party, which Nikolai Knyazhitsky represents, has already announced an ultimatum. If the bill is not voted on in the second reading in July, the deputies of this political force will publish the names of their parliamentary colleagues who refuse to sign for the document to be submitted for voting in the session hall. People's Deputy Irina Gerashchenko wrote about this on Facebook. “Meanwhile, the Frond in robes raises their heads. Refuses to perform funeral services for our fallen soldiers. He is waiting for the occupier and cooperating with him,” writes Gerashchenko, explaining the need to hurry up with the adoption of the law as a whole.
Nikolai Knyazhitsky also insists: in Ukraine there is now a myth that the law should not be adopted because Republican politicians in the United States will be against it. But only a small part of the Republicans, says a Ukrainian MP, is using the religious issue against Ukraine. “We received the Tomos for the OCU during the presidency of Donald Trump. He supported it then, and will continue to support it in the future. Therefore, there is speculation to cover up the reluctance to vote for this,” says Knyazhitsky.
Deputy Dunda talks about another similar myth. Allegedly, someone is threatening Ukrainian MPs with sanctions for promoting a religious law, because the Labor Party in Great Britain, which has a great chance of coming to power after early elections, stands on the principles of protecting religion and it can resort to such punishment. “Our deputies are really afraid of this. So I asked the Labor Lords if this was true, and they objected. “Where are we and where is the Russian Church in Ukraine,” they say,” Dunda said.
