MOSCOW, December 27. /TASS/. Almost 1,300 churches of the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) have been forcibly seized and handed over to schismatics since 2014, with about 600 parishes facing the similar plight over the past two years, Sergey Melnikov, Chairman of the Russian Association for Protection of Religious Freedom, said.
"It was since 2014, the year of the Maidan coup, when a variety of violations of the UOC believers’ rights began to surge like an avalanche," Melnikov said. "Between 2014 and 2018, as many as 50 churches were already seized. Between 2019 and 2021, about 500 parishes belonging to the UOC were illegally re-registered in favor of the so-called Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU), and 144 churches were seized by schismatics. And in 2022-2023, about 600 parishes were forcibly transferred to the OCU."
According to the expert, as of January 1, 2014, almost 12,673 communities of the canonical Orthodox Church were registered in Ukraine. In general, the cases of seizures of UOC churches have been known since 1989, but, for example, between 2003 to 2011, there were just a little more than 20 such incidents, Melnikov added.
Ukraine has recently waged a vigorous crusade against the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church, including by prodding its religious communities into defecting to the jurisdiction of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, which was created from two schismatic entities in 2018. In October 2023, the first reading of the bill on banning the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, drafted following Zelensky’s directives, passed through the Verkhovna Rada (unicameral parliament).