What’s Next for Moscow Church in Ukraine? A Variety of Possibilities

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Aug. 21 – Moscow officials and many commentators who have followed them say that the Verkhovna Rada’s approval of a new law banning all religious organizations subordinate to religious structures in countries engaged in aggression against Ukraine will mean that the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, formerly of the Moscow Patriarchate will be suppressed.

            But, Aleksey Makarkin of the Moscow Center for Political Technologies says, that is only one of the possibilities that are likely to be explored during the next ten months that that church and others like it in Ukraine have to bring themselves into correspondence with the new law («Спектр» использует cookie и хранит персональные данные.

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t.me/BuninCo/4385 reposed at echofm.online/opinions/chto-oznachaet-zakon-o-zaprete-ukrainskoj-pravoslavnoj-czerkvi).

            As the Russian analyst points out, the UOC is not mentioned by name in the new law and is not the only church affected. Other smaller groups like the Old Believers will also be affected, and what they do may have an important influence on what Kyiv and the UOC will do during this period and after.

            Moreover, over the next ten months, one after the publication of the law at the end of which it will go into effect and then nine more to give such churches a chance to change, the UOC and other churches will be able to continue as they have except in the four Ukrainian oblasts where a ban has already been put in place. Property disputes will certainly arise.

            The law just passed makes it clear, Makarkin says, that simply removing references to the Moscow Patriarchate as the UOC did in 2022 won’t be enough to avoid having the church banned. Far more will have to be done to prove that the UOC or other churches have in fact severed connections with Moscow.

            Consequently, he continues, there are a variety of possibilities for the UOC in the future: It could refuse to obey and become an underground church, a possibility Moscow commentators focus on. It could take further steps to break with Moscow that might satisfy Kyiv. It could join the Orthodox Church of Ukraine which is autocephalous and subordinate to Constantinople.

            Or Makarkin adds, there is the “exotic” possibility that the UOC could seek the protection of the Universal Patriarchate in Constantinople and thus continue to exist alongside the OCU, although how such an arrangement would work or whether Kyiv or the OCU would accept it is difficult to imagine.

            In short, the new law is another move in the complicate chess game over Orthodoxy and other faiths in Ukraine rather than the definitive end of the Moscow church there. And the struggle over that church’s future will continue in the Ukrainian political system, in the Ukrainian courts, and in the hearts and minds of believers as well.