News
No UOC Parishes Included in DESS’s Updated Critical Organizations List
Ukraine’s updated list of religious organizations eligible for mobilization exemptions includes thousands of OCU, UGCC, and other communities, but no UOC parishes.
KYIV — The State Service of Ukraine for Ethnopolitics and Freedom of Conscience (DESS) has updated its list of religious organizations classified as critically important, with 11,220 legal entities now included. The revised 856-page document, approved by DESS Order No. H-145/11 and published on September 8, supersedes an earlier list issued in June 2025.
Inclusion on the list allows religious organizations to obtain mobilization exemptions for their employees, including clergy. The updated register covers organizations in 23 regions and Kyiv and has grown by nearly 3,500 entries compared with the original version. However, no parish of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) appears among the organizations granted this status.
More than 3,500 Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU) organizations are included, along with approximately 2,300 structures of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church and 648 Roman Catholic organizations. The list also contains 61 legally existing communities of the former Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church (UAOC), which dissolved in December 2018 when it joined the OCU.
The register additionally recognizes 19 pagan communities as critically important, including groups affiliated with RUNVira, the “Ancestral Hearth of the Native Orthodox Faith,” and other Ukrainian Native Faith movements. It also contains ten organizations connected with the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia (ROCOR), including the Odesa diocesan administration, a seminary, and two monasteries, along with seven Old Believer communities. The Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra is listed as a men’s monastery of the “Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Orthodox Church of Ukraine).”
The disparity has drawn attention because the list grants exemption eligibility to organizations that ceased functioning years ago and to pagan communities, while UOC parishes are absent. According to the source, UOC clergy continue to face mobilization, while organizations representing the OCU, other Christian confessions, former jurisdictions, and pagan movements have been included in the state register.
Previously, the UOJ reported that DESS ordered the Zaporizhzhia Diocese to sever alleged ties with the Russian Orthodox Church.
Read also
