The Ukrainian model of church relations is arranged in such a way that we have no main church or a hierarchy of churches. All churches are equal before the law and enjoy the same privileges.
This was emphasized by the head of the State Service for Ethnopolicies and Freedom of Conscience Viktor Yelenskyi in an interview with DW.
“But historically, many churches had special ties with local elites and the central government. The Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate) has long been favored in many regions, and the government treated it very kindly,” the official said.
According to him, under these conditions, when the war began in 2014, many were shocked by the fact that the UOC (MP), which proclaimed that its faithful were on both sides, to a large extent, however, became on the other, Russian, side of the line of contact.
“This church has always demanded peace from the Kyiv authorities and never demanded one from the Moscow authorities, allowed itself to publicly despise Ukrainian soldiers and completely followed the policy of the Moscow Patriarchate,” Viktor Yelenskyi emphasized.
