In a lengthy investigation, the Ukrainian State Service of Ukraine on Ethnic Policy and Freedom of Conscience (DESS) has concluded that the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC MP) is still legally part of the Russian Orthodox Church.
The timing of the document, which confirms an earlier expert committee probe, is particularly crucial. It comes just one week after Ukraine stripped citizenship from the UOC MP leader.
Ukraine is gearing up for a lengthy legal battle with the UOC MP after banning Russian-affiliated churches in August 2024.
The law gave religious organizations nine months to sever relations with Russia. Now, DESS is probing whether the connections are still there.
But, how does one establish such matters? After all, the UOC MP insists it supports Ukraine and that it already cut its Russian ties back in 2022.
Moreover, it is leading a global campaign decrying alleged state religious persecution. This initiative has been particularly fruitful among American Republicans, in part thanks to lavish lobbying efforts.
Canonically speaking
The path of an Orthodox church to autocephaly (independence) is notoriously vague and complicated. Unlike the Catholic Church, governed by a single primate from Rome, global Orthodoxy is defined as a constellation of amicable jurisdictions that received independence according to pastoral needs.
Ideally, of course. In practice, however, the path to church independence has been fraught with political strife, stonewalling, and competition between two centers of Orthodox gravitas—the Moscow and Ecumenical patriarchates.
Enter the Ukrainian Orthodox Church
The UOC MP’s predicament stems from centuries of imperial church politics. The 1686 transfer of the Kyiv Metropolitanate from Constantinople to Moscow began Russian control over Ukrainian Orthodoxy—control that outlasted the Soviet Union and continued into independent Ukraine.
This pattern wasn’t unique to Ukraine. The Russian Orthodox Church historically granted limited “autonomy” to Orthodox communities in its sphere—a status somewhere between full independence and direct diocesan control.
The Japanese Orthodox Church, Latvian Orthodox Church, Estonian Orthodox Church, and Ukrainian Orthodox Church all received similar arrangements.
True autocephaly, by contrast, means complete independence—as Moscow granted to the Polish Orthodox Church in 1948 and the Orthodox Church in America in 1970. The language was unambiguous: full canonical independence with no mention of accessing global Orthodoxy “through” another church.