This contains far-reaching possibilities for banning religious organisations.
The Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOK) is in the crossfire.
Is this the end of religious freedom in Ukraine?
The matter is not as simple as initial reports suggest.
The law is generally directed against any religious organisation that has its administrative centres in a foreign country that is carrying out military aggression against Ukraine.
However, it is obvious that a direct connection to the Russian aggressor and any direct influence of the Russian Orthodox Churches (ROC) in Ukraine are in focus.
And even if it is theoretically directed against any religious organisation in Ukraine where such tendencies can be proven, it essentially concerns the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.
It is currently expected that the process will take nine months before the law comes into force. This is the "grace period", so to speak, which should provide the opportunity to break off relations with Moscow.
The further procedure envisages that the State Agency for Ethnic Policy and Freedom of Conscience will appoint a commission of religious scholars and experts. In the event of suspicion, it is to draw up an expert opinion, taking into account a wide range of aspects and also questions of canon law, which will serve as the basis for a possible ban in a subsequent court case.
An investigation begins when a suspected case is reported. The Commission publishes the start of its investigation on its website and collects information and documents that prove or disprove the link to the aggressor.
If it is able to provide relevant evidence, the religious organisation is given a further month to remedy any violations and submit its own report. The Commission can then decide whether to settle the dispute or initiate legal proceedings.
Here, too, the possibility remains to appeal and contest the judgement of the court.
Support for the ban from representatives of other denominations
The decision to tighten and intensify the law is supported by representatives of the All-Ukrainian Council of Churches and Religious Organisations, a non-governmental organisation that represents around 90 percent of all religious communities in Ukraine. Although founded on the initiative of the Ukrainian state, this organisation essentially represents an independent opinion and does not act as a puppet dependent on the state.
Nevertheless, the representatives of the UOK, which is a founding member of this council, were not invited to the consultations on the new law and to the meeting with the president, which makes it obvious that they are the ones who are actually affected. Since no official decision is possible without the representatives of the UOK, the others have expressed their position as individual representatives of the Council.
The religious composition of the Ukrainian population is extremely diverse, and in principle Ukraine is a state with genuine, far-reaching religious freedom, in which religious organisations can freely come together and organise themselves according to association law, as it were - regardless of what they believe in.
Private meetings of unregistered groups for religious purposes are also legal. When the state intervenes, it is not targeting religious ideas at all - at most insofar as they are politically charged and promote or openly propagate a point of view in which Ukraine's right to exist is threatened.
This certainly applies to the concept of the so-called "Russian world" (Russkij Mir) in its various facets, as represented by the Russian Orthodox Church.
The Federal Republic of Germany also has the legal option of categorising religious groups as unconstitutional and banning them.
Ukraine wants to make a similar claim, but the circumstances are much more complex than when a state reserves the right to take action against individual religious extremist groups. Even if it is a generally formulated law, it is clear to everyone that the UOK is in fact the focus of attention.
For the Orthodox Church, which speaks of independence from Moscow but cannot be interested in breaking off church communion with its Moscow mother church, it is almost like squaring the circle when it is now faced with the challenge of completely suspending cooperation with Moscow on the one hand, without giving up church unity on a theological level and thus the basis for the canonical status of its church on the other.
The fact that this affects the second-largest religious group in Ukraine, in which many also want Ukraine to remain a state without a complete break with Russian Orthodoxy, makes the whole issue particularly explosive.
Confessional affiliation only vaguely comprehensible
When the size of religious communities is discussed in Ukraine, the most reliable and easiest to grasp figures are those of the state-registered church communities. There is no doubt that the Ukrainian Orthodox Church had by far the most registered parishes, at peak times probably over 13,000, and to this day it has a far better infrastructure in every respect - for example in terms of training centres and monasteries - than its competitor, the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OKU).
Since Ukrainian law allows parishes to change their church affiliation relatively easily by parish resolution, there have been numerous conversions of parishes in recent years, even before the war began, motivated at the time by Constantinople's recognition of the autocephaly of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine in 2019. Nevertheless, the number of UOK parishes remains high.
However, how many parishioners are actually hidden behind the individual parishes and what the demographic distribution of religious affiliation looks like is another question, as neither the number of parishioners nor personal conversions are systematically recorded and can therefore only be estimated.
Statistics are only reliable to a limited extent here, and yet representative street surveys reveal an interesting picture: on the one hand, the number of people who describe themselves as Orthodox fluctuates greatly in these surveys.
Since the early 2000s, more and more people have publicly declared their Orthodoxy. While two thirds of all Orthodox Christians identified with the Church loyal to Moscow before the start of the war in Ukraine in 2014, the number of believers in the Kiev Patriarchate, which is independent of Moscow, rose sharply and doubled in a short space of time.
Currently, the number of those who publicly declare their allegiance to the UOK is decreasing and is probably less than 15 per cent of the population.
ROK and UOK - a complicated relationship
Contrary to what its name might suggest, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church is not an autocephalous church in the Orthodox sense.
It was granted a certain degree of autonomy by Moscow in 1990 and has endeavoured to remove the reference to Russia from its statutes since 2022, but it has never completely detached itself from Moscow.
Its current relationship with the Russian Orthodox Church is unclear, and even members of the UOC find the relationship with the ROC extremely complex and unprecedentedly difficult.
A sober view of the situation is probably this: Although the UOC declared its independence in May 2022, it avoided the central concept of autocephaly and did not formally denounce Moscow's recognition as the highest authority of its church, which is why it is entitled to claim canonicity for itself within Orthodoxy.
One conceivable alternative would be a clear break by declaring autocephaly, which would make the UOC uncanonical and commit it to an uncertain future.
A complete and amicable separation from Moscow while maintaining the status of a canonical Orthodox church is not in sight. This leaves the UOC in a dilemma. On the one hand, it never tires of condemning the war, and yet on the other, it maintains its affiliation with the Church of Moscow.
If the new law bans the activities of the ROC in Ukraine because it actively supports the Russian war of aggression, this will inevitably affect the UOC as well.
The new law also represents a prophylactic precaution against a possible attempt by the ROK to establish its own congregations in Ukraine, which the law can certainly rule out.
Consequences of a ban on the UOK
For the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, the new law does indeed create an immediate need for action if it does not want to risk bans on its eparchies, monasteries and parishes, as the head of its church actually resides in Moscow.
It is therefore imperative that it follows up its words about independence from Moscow with further, clearly recognisable action.
It remains to be seen whether there is a willingness to do so and whether it will be enough to practise recognisable self-administration, condemn the war and adopt Ukrainian patriotism, freeze direct cooperation with Moscow, transfer stauropegial monasteries under Moscow's jurisdiction to its own jurisdiction, dispose of pro-Russian literature from the church's warehouses, prove itself above any suspicion of conspiracy and take other measures that do not necessarily jeopardise the canonicity of the church.
Direct negotiations with Constantinople or even unification with the OKU are just as unlikely as the unilateral declaration of autocephaly with its far-reaching consequences. It is difficult to predict whether the state will ultimately be satisfied with the most comprehensive distancing possible or whether bans will actually be implemented.
As Ukrainian law only considers individual eparchies, monasteries and parishes, but not the church as a whole, to be legal entities, prohibition proceedings are certainly also legally very complex procedures that require a very differentiated approach and must take a close look at the behaviour of individual responsible parties, as a large number of examinations and court proceedings would be required.
However, an explanatory statement on the law only assumes possible proceedings against the church leadership and its administration, i.e. primarily proceedings against bishops and dioceses, not against each individual parish.
UOK theologians in Germany want to remain in their church
A ban on large parts of the UOK would in any case have different effects on its believers, depending on their commitment to the church.
Some of the faithful who are less deeply rooted in their church affiliation would certainly turn away from the UOK and find a new affiliation in the OKU.
Others, who are deeply connected to their church, will remain loyal to it despite a ban and go underground.
The vast majority of UOK theology students living in Germany show no ambition to join another church.
However, it is clear to them that bans would not resolve the ecclesiastical and social tensions, but rather exacerbate them. They fear a stigmatisation of members of the UOK within Ukrainian society and the attribution of a pro-Russian, pro-Moscow position, which in their eyes does not correspond to the reality of their patriotic attitude towards Ukraine and is therefore perceived as unfair.
On the other hand, the majority of Ukrainian citizens support the law, as they see it as an effective instrument for taking action against political agitation controlled by Moscow, which uses religion as a safe space.
It is all too understandable that Ukraine is pushing to curb the political influence of the Russian Orthodox Church with its decidedly pro-Russian stance in its country.
However, if Ukraine's second-largest church were to gradually move underground, this would shift a domestic political problem rather than solve it. This should always be kept in mind.
Orthodox Ukrainians abroad
For the Orthodox who come to us as refugees, the church situation is not easy: the ROC is very well organised in Germany, for example, and would be the natural home for members of the UOK; for some it has also become a home here, while others shy away from contact with Russian believers.
The UOK's own congregations are only slowly emerging; it is rather unlikely that the consequences of the new law could affect them in Germany, as the German Office for the Protection of the Constitution would have to recognise the need for action.
The OKU is prohibited by the church from establishing its own congregations abroad; here too, new structures are only slowly emerging under the jurisdiction of Constantinople. Many Orthodox Christians also seek a home in other Orthodox churches, even in the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church. In the latter case, the common nationality and language often outweigh the historical problems.
However, the impression often arises that Orthodox Ukrainians in our country are like "sheep without a shepherd" - an unsatisfactory situation in many respects.
Overall, they are very happy to be able to live in peace and prosperity in Germany. This also applies to the students and scholarship holders at our university, who are very grateful for the peaceful tranquillity of the Altmühltal.