Political expert and theologian Andriy Kovalyov believes that the UOC of the Moscow Patriarchate is Putin’s last hope to sow a split in Ukrainian society.
He expressed the opinion on the air of Espresso TV.
“It is no challenge to table in the Verkhovna Rada a bill banning the UOC of the Moscow Patriarchate. The main thing is to make sure that such bills are effective. There must be effective means of combating this so-called religious organization, because the UOC-MP is not in fact a religious organization. UOC-MP is Putin’s last hope to split society in Ukraine. It is Putin’s largest organization in Ukraine. I believe that Putin dared to invade Ukraine in the first place because there are almost 12,000 parishes of the Moscow Patriarchate in Ukraine,” Kovalyov explained.
Kovalyov stressed that one of the main means of combating the ROC in Ukraine should be terminating all church lease contracts, which had been signed with the Moscow Patriarchate.
“It is necessary to terminate all contracts for the lease of churches by the UOC-MP. This applies to all state-owned temples. It’s very easy to terminate these deals. The fact is that no one has analyzed these agreements for 30 years. They were violated systematically. Another very effective way to counter the activities of the UOC-MP is taxation. As soon as this whole organization starts being taxed, we will see how dozens of priests will leave the UOC-MP,” Kovalyov added.
It should be recalled that the UOC-MP considers rupture of unity with the Russian Orthodox Church to be a violation of religious freedoms.
