A senior Ukrainian official complained that slow judicial progress and foreign lobbying were delaying the proposed ban of the Kyiv Metropolis, the administrative centre of the Moscow-linked Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC).
“The lawyers of the Kyiv Metropolis are taking extensive measures to delay the proceedings, because when the case comes to the merits, they will not be able to explain why the Kyiv Metropolis spends so much effort and money … paying for the services of foreign lawyers, to remain part of the Moscow Patriarchate,” said Viktor Yelenskyi, head of the State Service for Ethnic Affairs and Freedom of Conscience (DESS), according to the state agency Ukrinform.
Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, Yelenskyi said that the courts have yet to begin considering the case on its merits, although it was initiated last summer. Several hearings have since been postponed.
The DESS case continues alongside disputes over church property and jurisdiction, including one involving the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra – one of the most important religious sites in Ukraine and a UNESCO World Heritage Site, which houses some of the most revered relics of Orthodox saints.
Metropolitan Epiphaniy, the head of the independent Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU), declared last week that the OCU monastic community of the Ukrainian Lavra had assumed full spiritual care of the St Anthony’s Near Caves, part of the Pechersk Lavra complex.
He said this testified to the irreversible process of “liberating the Lavra from the previously imposed yoke of the ‘Russian world’”.
“Gradually and patiently, we are moving confidently toward the full restoration of this sacred place precisely as a spiritual centre of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine,” Epiphaniy wrote in a social media post.
Control of the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra has been one of many points of contention between the OCU and UOC, with the latter raising objections to transfers of its property under state ownership.
In 2023, state authorities terminated an agreement with the UOC for the use of the Pechersk Lavra because of the Church’s alleged ties to the Moscow Patriarchate and lease violations. More than one hundred UOC monks are still present in the complex.
In a separate development, a UOC bishop was released from a lengthy pre-trial detention and placed under house arrest.
Metropolitan Arseniy of Sviatohirsk was originally detained in 2024 on suspicion of revealing the locations of Ukrainian troops to enemy forces. He accused the Ukrainian government of persecuting the UOC and of inhumane treatment.