EXCLUSIVE: Former OCU Cleric Says Dumenko Follows State Orders, Constantinople Regrets Tomos

DEC. 11, 2025 — In an exclusive interview with the Union of Orthodox Journalists of America released on Thursday, a former priest of the state-backed Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU) spoke about his personal experiences as part of the structure.

Fr. Yaroslav Yasenets, who is now a part of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church - Kyiv Patriarchate (UOC-KP, not to be confused with the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church under His Beatitude Met. Onuphry), recently left the OCU and provided various revelations about how it functions. This comes after statements he made immediately after his decision to leave, including his observation that many who do not even know the Creed are ordained in the OCU.

Yasenets was born into an atheistic family of scientists in Kyiv in 1992, later converting to Christianity when he was 18 years of age. He attended Lviv Catholic University in Ukraine and the International Academy of Philosophy in Spain before receiving his diploma from the Chernivtsi Theological Institute in Ukraine. He became a priest in 2018, ordained by the self-proclaimed Patriarch Philaret of the UOC-KP, after years as a subdeacon.

Before the war, he also received a degree from Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology in Brookline, Massachusetts, after participating in a program virtually and writing his thesis on the history of the Ukrainian Church since 1989.

Saying that the OCU, as a matter of simplicity, should be referred to as the “Church of Epiphanius,” since there is no “Church of Epiphanius, Filaret, or Onuphrius,” but rather the “Church of Jesus Christ,” Yasenets explained that he was automatically put in the OCU under Epiphany Dumenko following the so-called unification council and Tomos of Autocephaly granted by Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, a series of events that unfolded from late 2018 into early 2019.

Following this council, after Philaret took offense to the title of “Honorary Patriarch” due to being under the impression he would be named the Primate of the new structure, he reformed the UOC-KP, which Yasenets has now returned to.

However, while he was part of the OCU, Yasenets became a chaplain and combined his parish service with his chaplaincy service in the warzone.

Decision to leave the OCU

As far as his decision to leave the OCU and return to the UOC-KP goes, Yasenets said there were both personal and objective reasons.

“When this church was formed, I already did not like many things, but I thought that the church is very new, very young, and the mistakes of the past will be corrected,” he said. “New tendencies will be created… and everything will become better.”

Over the years, as nothing improved, Yasenets became more and more angry:

“I saw that the policy of Epiphanius was to push all the bright personalities as far away from the control of the church as possible, and surround himself with only people who were loyal to him personally.”

Alleging that “unfortunately there are many pro-Russian priests and bishops” in the UOC, “but there are many pro-Ukrainian who want this church to be independent,” Yasenets said that the Russian invasion was striking for many hierarchs.

“Many of them considered Russia to be like our brothers, and they understood that they are not brothers at all,” he said. “The big movement in the Church of Onuphrius began for its total independence.”

The Ukrainian state and OCU instead declared that the entire UOC is made up of Russian agents, Yasenets added, and this was a convenient way to begin seizing church properties and lessen the UOC’s influence on the religious aspect of Ukraine’s culture.

“This was done in a very bad, undemocratic, and cruel way,” he said. “Totally un-Christian, and I didn’t want to take part in it.”

What he was doing in the OCU was not bringing enough good fruits, Yasenets shared, adding that the OCU does not have enough priests, has very few parishes, hardly any monasteries, and the education and formation is lacking.

“The Church of Epiphanius is rather dependent on the Ecumenical Patriarch, and of course this patriotic element of the church is not quite patriotic. It is just serving the interests of the current Ukrainian ideology. We are basically doing the same as the Church in Russia is now doing in serving Putin’s regime.”

As part of this push to serve national interests, Yasenets said that the attacks on the UOC are very violent and destroy the reputation of Dumenko. He added that, in becoming Primate of the OCU, Dumenko betrayed his mentor Philaret who “gave him everything.”

Yasenets also alleged that the OCU did not like him because he was “ultra-conservative” and did not go along with Western liberal values that are being pushed in Ukraine. 

“One day I understood I have to excuse myself in front of my conscience and in front of God,” he said. “‘Why am I participating in this structure?’ That was the reason I decided to leave once and for all.”

Formation of priests

According to Yasenets, very few people have a desire to become priests in the OCU, and the ones that do have no interest in theology. What encourages those who do wish to be ordained is that, if they can get a parish, they will have financial support and a stable life. If one is “loyal to the system,” Yasenets said, they can even become rich.

“They have no deep interest in theology, and they don’t want to conduct research to create great works in theology,” Yasenets said, also acknowledging that many who are ordained in the OCU do not know how to make the Sign of the Cross and are unable to recite the Creed.

To back this up, he compared the topics at two different conferences at the Kyiv Theological Academy of the OCU and St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary here in the United States.

“In a non-Orthodox country with very low financing of the church and no support from the state – [in Ukraine] we have full support – the level of education is much better, and the level of the conferences,” he said.

In Kyiv, the professors don’t have any published works and if someone has the “smallest wish” to be ordained they will be, regardless of their level of formation. Even bishops don’t have the proper level of education, Yasenets said.

“When I applied to Holy Cross, I needed the recommendation of [Dumenko] to help me to obtain the visa," the former OCU cleric said. "He refused even to talk to me, and when I met him at an event, I gave him the written request, and he said, ‘Why do you need one more diploma? You already have one.’ He is not interested [in having] good, educated priests.”

The complexity of church and state in Ukraine

Dumenko receives orders from the state, Yasenets alleged, as it is the wish of the authorities to have one national church. Due to a significant Uniate and Protestant presence throughout Ukraine, it is difficult to have unity with the Orthodox if it were to be based on dogma alone. Instead, the church must be based on national identity.

“They need this kind of state church to serve the state,” he said.

As far as the situation of multiple “Orthodox” churches in Ukraine, Yasenets said Dumenko likes being favored by the state and does not want to lose his position of power. If there were to be true unity and Met. Onuphry were to agree to a new council, there would be more UOC bishops than OCU bishops and Onuphry would be elected as primate.

“Epiphanius and his followers would lose their position, so he doesn’t want to do that,” Yasenets said. He also shared his belief that Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew regrets his decision to grant autocephaly to the OCU.

“He told Epiphanios, ‘I gave you this Tomos to unite Orthodoxy and you are dividing it.’ After that violent seizing of the church in Cherkasy… when Pat. Bartholomew viewed this video, he gathered an important Synod of his church and they even discussed the possibility of taking the Tomos away,” Yasenets said. “But, in the end they said that it would strike their reputation very heavily… the whole world will make fun of us.”

Because of this reality, there is tension between Dumenko and the Ecumenical Patriarch, Yasenets claimed. Dumenko is angry about this and “wants to fight for his ideas until the end.”

Constantinople’s awareness of the situation

Yasenets said that, as far as he knows, the Ecumenical Patriarchate has tried to “regulate” the issue of church seizures and persecution of the UOC, but Dumenko views himself as in charge of everything.

“Since he is supported by the state, it is very hard to change anything. I believe that Pat. Bartholomew is now not even trying to do something. Sometimes he supports Epiphanius a little bit, like organizing his visit to Mount Athos, in order to show that he is responsible for his decisions. He created [the OCU], so now he is responsible for them and his honor does not let him say he doesn’t have anything to do with that.”

Maybe he prays and hopes the situation will change, Yasenets said, but he knows the Ecumenical Patriarch and many other hierarchs are not pleased with the situation. In particular, the relationship between Dumenko and the Exarch of the Ecumenical Throne to Ukraine is not in a good place, and they have not concelebrated the liturgy in a long time after being seen together often.

The full hour-long interview can be viewed on UOJ-USA’s YouTube channel here.

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