MOSCOW, August 18. /TASS/. Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada (parliament) Speaker Ruslan Stefanchuk told the Rada television channel he was convinced that the canonic Ukrainian Orthodox Church will soon be outlawed for its ties with Russia.

"The Russian church in Ukraine [the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, or UOC] will be prohibited," Stefanchuk said. "The bill [to be brought before the parliament next week] envisages an immediate ban on it."

"As far as Ukrainian religious organizations, suspected of cooperation with the Russian church, are concerned, they will be given nine months to sever their ties with Moscow in line with the bill, if it is adopted," he continued.

"In other words, the organizations that fall under this law will be recognized as defunct nine months later," the speaker added.

It would be up to experts to decide what religious organizations should be closed, Stefanchuk said, without elaborating on who these experts will be.

Ukraine is conducting an active campaign against the canonical UOC, including encouraging the transition of its religious communities to the jurisdiction of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, which was created in 2018 from the merger of two schismatic religious structures. Local authorities are stripping the UOC of the right to lease land for siting church buildings; with their support, supporters of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine are forcibly seizing the churches of the canonical church and attacking its clergymen. As of November 4, 2023, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) had initiated criminal proceedings against 70 UOC-affiliated clergymen since February 2022. Sixteen UOC metropolitans and 19 hierarchs were stripped of Ukrainian citizenship.

On October 19, 2023, the Verkhovna Rada (Ukrainian parliament) passed in the first reading a bill, drafted by the government on the instructions of President Vladimir Zelensky, aimed at banning the UOC outright. However, little progress was made until recently, when the lawmakers introduced final amendments to the draft.

The document is expected to enter force 30 days after being published, in order to give the government time to prepare related by-laws, regulations and other secondary legislative acts.

Nevertheless, according to the State Service of Ukraine for Ethno-Politics and Freedom of Conscience, at least five to six million people in the country remain UOC parishioners.