OSCE Expert: Ukrainian Government Directives Toward UOC Now Function as Repressive Measures

UOC moleben on Volodymyrska Hill on the Day of the Baptism of Rus’ – 2018. Photo: UOJ

KYIV — The Ukrainian government’s directives to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) have effectively become instruments of repression, according to OSCE expert on religious freedom Natallia Vasylevych.

Commenting on recent demands from the State Service for Ethnopolitics and Freedom of Conscience (DESS), Vasylevych argued that state pressure on the UOC — particularly calls to sever alleged ties with Moscow — have reached a critical level. Any government-issued “directive,” especially those accompanied by threats of liquidation, is now perceived as coercive rather than corrective, she said.

She noted the symbolic weight of a recent directive sent to His Beatitude Metropolitan Onuphry of Kyiv, just days after he was stripped of citizenship over purported affiliations with Russia.

Vasylevych described the broader state approach over the past three years as a coercion-based system: pressure followed by conditional leniency. Even if the Church were offered terms it had once sought itself, the conditions are now rendered "principally unfulfillable" because of the hostile context, she stated.

Calling for a shift in approach, the expert warned that continued pressure is likely to fuel further escalation, driven by societal war fatigue, distrust in authorities, and unresolved tensions with the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU).

These are "no longer relations between equal partners who respects each other and act reasonably toward one another” Vasylevych said. Instead, "distortions and projections prevail."

Previously, UOJ reported that DESS ordered the Kyiv Metropolia to resolve alleged “violations” by August 18.

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