KIEV, January 13. /TASS/. A drop in trust in the institution of the church has been recorded in Ukraine amid a campaign by the country's authorities against the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC), a report published on Friday by the Kiev International Institute of Sociology said.
"The share of those who trust the church has dropped from 51% to 44%," the poll said.
The survey was conducted from December 4 to 27 by telephone interview and involved 995 respondents in all regions of Ukraine controlled by the Kiev regime.
Nikolay Danilevich, deputy head of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church department for external church relations, commented on this information by saying that the authorities' struggle with one confession affected all other confessions and society's general attitude toward the church in general. "Those who lobby for the interests of one confession and aggressively sink the other should think about whether it will be a pyrrhic victory for them," he said. The cleric also criticized religious scholars and experts who "make their names on hatred against the Ukrainian Orthodox Church."
Recently, the Ukrainian authorities have been waging a campaign against the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church. Since mid-November 2022, the Ukrainian Security Service has been conducting searches in its churches and dioceses across the country. Several hierarchs have been charged with treason, subversion, and "dissemination of propagandistic theses among parishioners". On December 1, 2022, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky issued a decree to enact a resolution of the National Security and Defense Council on Certain Aspects of the Activities of Religious Organizations in Ukraine and the Application of Personal Special Economic and Other Restrictive Measures (Sanctions), essentially aimed at banning the UOC. More specifically, he issued orders to submit a bill to parliament on banning "religious organizations affiliated with centers of influence in the Russian Federation," stepping up "measures to identify and counter subversive activities by Russian special services in Ukraine’s religious sphere," and scrutinizing the Charter governing the Ukrainian Orthodox Church for signs of ecclesiastical and canonic links with the Moscow Patriarchate.
On January 1, Ukrainian Orthodox Church clerics were denied access to the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra. On January 7, the head of the schismatic Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU), Epiphanius (Dumenko), held a Christmas service in the Assumption Cathedral.