Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy signed a decree authorizing sanctions against representatives of religious organizations associated with Russia.
The UOC declared its independence from Moscow in May over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
In his nightly video address on Thursday, Zelenskyy said the use of Kyiv’s Pechersk Lavra monastery complex — a UNESCO world heritage site revered as the cradle of Orthodox monasticism in the region — would also come under further scrutiny. Members of the Security Service of Ukraine, the country’s National Guard and police searched the monastery last week after a priest spoke favorably about Russia during a service there. The Security Service said its agents searched more than 350 church buildings in all, including at another monastery and in a diocese of the Rivne region, 240 kilometers west of Kyiv.
The security agency, which is known by the Ukrainian acronym SBU, said the searches turned up “pro-Russian literature, which is used during studies in seminaries and parish schools, including for propaganda of the ‘Russian world.’” More than 50 people underwent in-depth “counterintelligence interviews, including using a polygraph,” as part of the investigation, the agency said.
Orthodox Christians are the largest religious population in Ukraine. But they have been fractured along lines that echo political tensions over Ukraine’s defense of its independence and its Western orientation amid Russia’s continued claim to political and spiritual hegemony in the region — a concept sometimes called the “Russian world.
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