Ukraine moves to ban church over alleged links to Moscow

Kyiv has moved towards banning the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) over its alleged ties to Moscow, as Ukraine’s forces reportedly launched raids on the occupied left bank of the Dnipro river and a Russian-American journalist was arrested in Russia.

Many people in Ukraine are deeply suspicious of the UOC, which until last year was officially subordinate to the Moscow Patriarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church, due to the latter’s loyalty to the Kremlin and support for Russia’s invasion of its neighbour.

Leaders of the UOC announced they were breaking ties with the Moscow Patriarchate last May, after the Kremlin shifted from eight years of localised conflict with Ukraine to full-scale war, but some UOC clerics have since been charged with treason and collaboration with Russia. An independent Orthodox Church of Ukraine was internationally recognised in 2019, and hundreds of UOC parishes switched allegiance to the new church.

Ukraine’s lower house of parliament passed a bill in the first of two required readings that would ban the operation of religious organisations that are affiliated with Russia or justify an invasion that has killed tens of thousands of people and displaced millions.

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Iryna Herashchenko of the European Solidarity party hailed the “historic” vote as “a first step to expelling Moscow’s priests from Ukrainian land”. She accused the UOC of being “not really a church but a branch of the FSB”, in reference to Russia’s domestic security service.

The bill was backed by 267 deputies and opposed by 15, and will become law if it passes a second reading and is signed by Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy. Moscow describes Ukraine’s treatment of the UOC as religious persecution.

Alsu Kurmasheva, an editor for Radio Free Europe-Radio Liberty who has US and Russian citizenship, was arrested on Wednesday in the city of Kazan for allegedly failing to register as a “foreign agent” under a law that is often used against Kremlin critics. She had returned home from Prague to deal with a family emergency and was then prevented from leaving Russia. US journalist Evan Gershkovich, who works for the Wall Street Journal, was arrested in Yekaterinburg in March on spying charges.

Ukraine shot down three of nine attack drones and one of eight missiles fired by Russia in the early hours of Thursday. Regional officials said on Thursday morning that five civilians had been killed and 11 hurt in shelling over the previous 24 hours.

Heavy fighting continued in parts of eastern and southeastern Ukraine, and officials in the industrial town of Avdiivka said Russian attacks were intensifying again after a lull of several days.

Ukraine’s military said Russia had bombed the village of Pishchanivka, which is on the occupied eastern bank of the Dnipro river in Kherson region, where Russian military bloggers have reported raids by Ukrainian forces in recent days.

“Russian sources claimed that likely company-sized elements of two Ukrainian naval infantry brigades conducted an assault across the Dnipro river … and framed these activities as part of a potential larger Ukrainian operation,” said the US-based Institute for the Study of War.