Legal framework on freedom of religion and actual application
The 1996 Constitution of Ukraine guarantees freedom of religion and worship, as well as the separation of Church and State. Article 35 states: “Everyone has the right to freedom of personal philosophy and religion. This right includes the freedom to profess or not to profess any religion, to perform alone or collectively and without impediment religious rites and ceremonial rituals, and to conduct religious activity. The exercise of this right may be restricted by law only in the interests of protecting public order, the health and morality of the population, or protecting the rights and freedoms of other persons. No religion shall be recognised by the State as mandatory.” The constitution also guarantees the right to conscientious objection on religious grounds.
Article 15 states: “Social life in Ukraine is based on the principles of political, economic and ideological diversity. No ideology shall be recognised by the State as mandatory. Censorship is prohibited. The State guarantees freedom of political activity not prohibited by the Constitution and the laws of Ukraine.”
The constitution guarantees the rights and freedoms of citizens of Ukraine. Article 21 states: “All people are free and equal in their dignity and rights. Human rights and freedoms are inalienable and inviolable.”
Article 34 states: “Everyone is guaranteed the right to freedom of thought and speech, and to the free expression of his or her views and beliefs.”
In the event that the performance of military duty is contrary to the religious beliefs of a citizen (exemption allowed for 10 religious groups), “the performance of this duty shall be replaced by alternative (non-military) service”, which lasts one and a half times longer than the term of military service in the Armed Forces of Ukraine. However, “the law does not exempt the clergy from military mobilization” and “the law allows no exemption from military reserve service during the ‘special period’ even for conscientious objectors”. This, currently the case with martial law in force, imposed a ban on military-aged men leaving the country. Most conscientious objectors were able to perform alternative service, but there were arrests and one case of imprisonment.
The 1991 Law on Freedom of Conscience and Religious organisations, reaffirming Article 35 of the constitution, serves as the main legal framework for religious freedom and the functioning of churches and religious organisations. The legislation has been subject to numerous amendments.
Notably, in 2018, Bill 5309 (reg. on 26/10/2016), earlier proposed as draft Bill 4511, (reg. on 22/04/2016), set conditions for the functioning of denominations whose centers are located in an aggressor country. The law imposes a change of the community’s name to explicitly identify their links the aggressor country. The law also prohibits these communities from sending their chaplains to the Ukrainian Army. Therefore, religious organisations whose centres are located outside Ukraine may be guided in their actions by the directions of these centres – if the legislation of Ukraine is not violated – and their name must clearly express their affiliation.
In 2019, the Ukrainian parliament adopted Bill 4128-d (reg. on 16/01/2019), earlier proposed as draft Bill 4128 (reg. on 23/02/2016), outlining the requirements a religious institution must obtain to attain official legal entity status. While a non-religious group must have at least three members to qualify for registration, the minimum number required for religious organisations is 10. Religious groups must also provide local authorities with a copy of their statutes. Bill 4128 also established new requirements for the registration and re-registration of religious organisations (i.e.: the rights of ownership or use of the premises specified in the statutes), as well as the simplification of transition requirements necessary for those Ukrainian Orthodox Church Moscow Patriarchate (UOC MP) communities intending to change their religious jurisdiction to the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU).
These legal changes were criticized by UOC MP and resulted in protests, however, human rights activists assessed that the redrafted Bill 4128-d left sufficient protections for the UOC communities.
Furthermore, Ukraine passed Law 5109 (reg. 19/02/2021) on the prevention and countering of anti-Semitism. The bill contains a definition of anti-Semitism, prohibits Judeophobia and its manifestations, and envisages penalties for violations of the legislation.
Since November 2019, religious head coverings may be worn for identity document photographs, including passports.
Concerning education, the Constitution of Ukraine declares that “the church and religious organizations in Ukraine are separated from the state and the school from the church respectively” (Art. 33 para. 3 of the Constitution of Ukraine). Public state schools are secular. Until 2015, the founders of educational institutions could be state bodies, cooperatives, public organisations, institutions, enterprises, and private individuals. Religious organisations were not included in this list, and, to establish any educational institution, religious organisations had to register as a public organisation, which enabled it to run such an activity.
In June 2015, the adoption of the Law on Amendments to Some Laws of Ukraine Regulating the Establishment of Educational Institutions by Religious Organisations allowed registered religious organisations to establish educational institutions at all levels: primary, secondary, after-school, vocational and higher institutions. Although, since 2019, children in Ukrainian state schools do not learn Christian ethics anymore, the syllabus does provide that Christian, Islamic, and Jewish-focused curriculums may offer ethics of faith courses.
Article 17 of the Law of Ukraine regarding Freedom of Conscience and Religious Organizations regulates the use of former cultural property by religious organisations. Ukraine has no law for the restitution of confiscated, communal real estate property, however, there have been several governmental decrees which deal with the return of confiscated, former religious property for the use of religious organisations. Under a 1992 government decree, for example, registered religious organisations were permitted to request the use of property confiscated by the Soviet regime if necessary for religious worship. The issue has been widely debated with even some proposed bans on the restitution of the religious communal property, such as draft bills titled “The Protection of Cultural Heritage”, Bill 2993 and an alternative Bill 2993-1.
The Terezin Declaration, which concerns the restitution of exclusively Jewish religious/ethnic property, was affirmed by Ukraine. This includes Judaica and the private property claims of Holocaust (Shoah) victims concerning immovable (real) property of synagogues, houses of worship, schools, community centers, hospitals, and cemeteries. In total, certain Jewish communities have obtained the use of nearly fifty properties (mostly synagogues) over the last two decades. (The most extensive list of identified formerly Jewish-owned communal properties was compiled by Vaad of Ukraine, which identifies more than 2,500 communal properties, including approximately 1,200 former synagogues). In 2021, the premises of the former synagogue in Lutsk was transferred to the “Habad-Lubavichi” Jewish organisation.
There are about 160 active Muslim mosques and places of worship in Ukraine and 90 madrassas, as well as seven theological universities. Muslim communities claim restitution of a site containing ruins of the historic mosque in the village of Ak-Mechet' (modern Akmechetka, Mykolayiv Oblast), but Russia’s temporary control over portions of the Mykolayiv Oblast, repeated attacks on the city, and other wartime contingencies have made progress on the issue difficult or impossible.
The rise from the underground of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (UGCC) raised questions about the restitution of property lost as a result of the forced liquidation of the Church in 1946. At that time all Church property was transferred to the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) including over three thousand parishes, 4,440 churches, five seminaries, and 127 monasteries, through which over three million believers were served by three thousand priests.
During the period under review, the Roman Catholic Church continued to request from the government the restitution of several Church buildings located predominantly in western Ukraine confiscated by the Soviet regime. Following decree No. 329 of 18.08.2020 by the president of Ukraine, and decree No. 1203-R of 16.09.2020 by the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine, the Church of St. Nicholas located on Velyka Vasylkivska street in Kyiv’s center is to be transferred for the free and permanent use by the Roman Catholic community. The St. Nicholas church, in disrepair and requiring a thorough restoration after a fire incident, is awaiting transfer upon a prime ministerial decree.
Incidents and developments
In Ukraine, 43 million citizens belong to a Christian faith. Eastern Orthodox churches predominate, with 67 percent of the population adhering to one or another strand of Orthodox Christianity. In addition to the Orthodox, Greek Catholic and Roman Catholic Churches, there are Protestant, Jewish and Muslim communities.
Today there are four major Churches (none functioning as a state Church) including: the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate, UOC MP) a branch of the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC); the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU); the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (UGCC, predominantly in the west of Ukraine); and the Roman Catholic Church. Of note is the development of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU).
The Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU) is an independent Eastern Orthodox Church established by a unification council in Kyiv on 15 December 2018 under the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople. The newly formed and autocephalous OCU united the historical Churches of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kyiv Patriarchate (UOC KP), the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church (UAOC), as well as some breakaway parishes of the UOC MP.
On Orthodox Easter Sunday in Istanbul, 6 January 2019, Patriarch Bartholomew, the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, formally read out and handed over a Tomos to Metropolitan Epiphanius I of Kyiv recognising the autocephaly of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU). The moment effectively reversed a decision issued 300 years prior, when in 1686 the Holy Synod of the Ecumenical Patriarchate entitled the Patriarch of Moscow to ordain the Metropolitan of Kyiv. The Moscow Patriarchate, in anticipation of the decision, broke Eucharistic communion with Ecumenical Patriarchate on 11 October 2018.
The decree marked what some consider the worst rupture in Orthodox ecclesial relations between Moscow and Constantinople in over 1000 years. In terms of numbers of faithful, the official recognition of the OCU for the Russian Orthodox Church was also alarming. The Orthodox Christian population in Ukraine is the third largest in the world following that of Russia and Ethiopia. Of the 36,000 Russian Orthodox Church’s parishes, approximately 12,000 were in Ukraine.
War and religious freedom violations in Russian-occupied territories
In 2014, Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula and Donbas region (parts of the Luhansk and Donetsk Oblasts, internationally recognized within Ukraine’s borders), were invaded by the Russian Federation and occupied illegitimately by proxy authorities. Following the Russian occupation of Crimea, the local branches of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kyiv Patriarchate (UOC KP) and the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (UGCC) were defined as “agents of foreign influence” accused of being “religious organisations created for a nationalistic purpose” and risked a ban on activities. The impact on all religious groups on the peninsula has been considerable. Prior to the Russian occupation, approximately 50 religious organisations operated on the peninsula. By 2019, their number had dropped to nine. Restitution of religious buildings for worship continues to be a challenge for non-ROC/UOC MP religious communities.
Russian authorities in Crimea have been accused of prosecuting numerous Tatars (indigenous Turkic Muslims), alleging affiliation with the Islamist extremist group, Hizb ut-Tahrir; the group functions legally in Ukraine but has been designated as a terrorist group in Russia and 13 other countries. Over a dozen Crimean Tatars were sentenced to prison without trial in 2022 alone.
On 20 April 2017, Jehovah’s Witnesses were designated an extremist group by Russia’s Supreme Court and banned. Legal in Ukraine, in the Russian occupied territories, however, Jehovah’s Witnesses continue to suffer raids and imprisonment. The Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs in occupied Kherson Oblast reported that it closed an underground Jehovah’s Witnesses congregation in Novosofivka, Kherson Oblast, in January 2023. Authorities reported that Russian forces found over 4,000 pieces of “forbidden literature” in the group’s possession.
In Ukraine, despite operating legally, the religious group nonetheless reported hostility and hate, including property damage; the Ukrainian authorities described these incidents as cases of hooliganism.
On 24 February 2022, Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine annexing territories including the oblasts of Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk, and Zaporizhzhia. On 3 March and 12 October 2022, the UN General Assembly resolution ES-11/4 formally condemned Russia’s “invasion and purported annexation”.
Occupied Ukrainian territories are subject to Russian Federation law including the Yarovaya and other anti-extremist legislation. Human rights abuses in the annexed regions, including the right to freedom of thought, conscience, and religion, are widespread. Given the state of war, media censorship, and the difficulty in reporting, violations of minority religious groups including bans, imprisonment, physical abuse, and disappearances of religious leaders of, among others, evangelical Christians, Roman and Greek Catholics, and Orthodox Church communities of non-Moscow Patriarchate obedience, are indicative only.
In addition to the shelling of religious property and cultural heritage sites, both on occupied and Ukrainian government-controlled areas, a March 2023 Institute for the Study of War report indicated that in the Russian-occupied territories religious violations were amounting to a “campaign of systematic religious persecution”. Russian soldiers or occupation authorities reportedly “committed at least 76 acts of religious persecution in Ukraine”; arrested or killed “at least 29 clergy or religious leaders”; […] “closed, looted, desecrated, or deliberately destroyed at least 13 places of worship”; and nationalized, or forcefully converted at least 26 places of worship to the Kremlin-controlled Russian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate”. Again the state of war and lack of reporting challenge an exact counting, however, representational examples include: in March 2022, Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU) priest Fr Myron Zvarychuk was murdered by Russian soldiers in Bucha; in November 2022, two Greek Catholic clerics, Fr’s Ivan Levytskyi and Bohdan Haleta, were detained and tortured in Berdyansk (it is unknown if they are still alive); and on 12 December, Russian soldiers seized Pastor Serhiy Karpenko of the Vefil (Bethel) Protestant Church – he was freed in January 2023.
Damage to Church property nationwide
As of 3 February 2023, the Ukrainian Institute for Religious Freedom (IRF) analysis indicates that 494 religious properties were destroyed, damaged, or looted by the Russian military. Most of the mosques, churches, and synagogues destroyed were in the Donetsk region (120) and Luhansk region (70), the Kyiv region (70) and the Kharkiv region (50). At least 170 Evangelical Christian churches and prayer houses were destroyed as were 94 religious buildings belonging to the Jehovah’s Witnesses. The IRF also recorded seizures of religious buildings and their use as Russian military bases or as firing positions. UNESCO has verified damage to 112 religious sites. Some of examples include: the shelling of the Nativity of Christ Cathedral in Sievierodonetsk (four times); the partial destruction of the St. Catherine's Church in Shchastia; the bombing in May and June of the UOC Sviatohirsk Lavra monastery and All-Saints monastic settlement killing a nun, three monks, and wounding six; damage to the St. Mitrophan’s Church in Lysychansk; and damages to the Matrona of Moscow Church, the St. Michael’s Parish Church and St. George’s Church in Rubizhne. The Bismillah Islamic Cultural Center in Sievierodonetsk was also severely damaged killing at least 17. In March 2022, Russian troops pillaged and damaged the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (UGCC) seminary in Vorzel after the building was struck twice by bombs. In November, the Sviatohirsk Lavra was again attacked and destroyed.
War and faith
In 2014, during a speech in which President Vladimir Putin justified the invasion of Crimea, the Russian leader invoked St. Vladimir, the Prince of Kyiv, declaring that “the prince’s 988 conversion to Eastern Orthodoxy ‘predetermined the overall basis of the culture, civilization and human values that unite the peoples of Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus.’” The speech crystallised a concept hitherto debated among intellectuals of a Russian worldview, the Russkiy Mir – the “Russian world” which framed not only a religious vision but also a geographic region of special interest. The narrative has been supported by the Russian Orthodox Church Moscow Patriarchate.
In February 2022, Metropolitan Onufry, the head of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC MP), a branch of the Moscow-based Russian Orthodox Church, appealed to Russia’s President Putin to stop the war. The Metropolitan declared “The Ukrainian and the Russian people came out of the same Kyiv Dnieper font. And the greatest shame for us is that we are at war with each other. The war between such nations is called Cain’s murder because it repeats the first sin of murder that occurred on earth when Adam’s son Cain killed his younger brother Abel.”
On 6 March 2022, in a sermon held at the Cathedral of the Holy Savior in Moscow days before Orthodox Lent, the Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill portrayed the war in spiritual terms. “We have entered into a struggle that has not a physical, but a metaphysical significance”, asserting that some Donbas separatists “were suffering for their fundamental rejection of the so-called values that are offered today by those who claim world power”.
On 27 May 2022, the Council of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate (UOC MP) declared its “full independence from Russia due to the stance of the head of the Orthodox Church on the war in Ukraine” removing all references to Moscow in the Church’s governing statutes. The decision, however, was largely symbolic, as “the UOC-MP’s laws which identified Moscow as the source of its communion with Orthodox Churches remained”.
On 30 May, Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill (Gundjaev) commented on this decision stating that “no temporal barrier will be able to destroy the spiritual unity of our people”, even though “evil spirits stirring under the heavens” try to divide the Orthodox “of Rus' and Ukraine”. Metropolitan Ilarion (Alfeev), of the external action service of the MP, stated that from the canonical point of view, nothing had changed in relations between the Russian and Ukrainian Orthodox.
On 25 September 2022, the Russian Patriarch Kirill declared that “sacrifice in the course of carrying out your military duty washes away all sins.”
Pope Francis has made numerous public and private appeals for an end to the war in Ukraine as well as multiple aid initiatives and diplomatic efforts for peace. So too Catholic Church leaders, particularly in bordering countries, condemned the war and called for peace. On 14 February 2022, the president of the Polish Catholic bishops’ conference appealed to Christian leaders in Ukraine and Russia to unite in prayer with Poland to stave off war. On 2 March 2022, Archbishop Stanislaw Gądecki, head of the Polish Catholic Bishops’ Conference, asked the Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia Kirill to appeal to Russian President Vladimir Putin to stop the war in Ukraine.
Religious freedom issues on the Ukrainian controlled territories
In September 2021, due to COVID 19 safety concerns, the government requested that Hasidic pilgrims refrain making the annual Rosh Hashanah pilgrimage to the grave of Rabbi Nachman of Breslov in Uman, Cherkasy Oblast. Nonetheless, over 25,000 made the pilgrimage.
The February 2022 invasion accelerated a fundamental shift in allegiances between Churches in Ukraine first set into motion with the 2019 Tomos, the formal recognition of the autocephaly of the OCU by the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople. Formally, the UOC MP is still the largest Orthodox church in Ukraine with official statistics indicating 11,400 parishes. With the invasion, however, analysts suggest that around 100 clergymen left the UOC MP, and from 15 December 2018 to 23 April 2023 approximately 1,333 parishes and monasteries changed jurisdiction from the UOC MP to the OCU. OCU representatives continue to accuse the UOC of contesting legitimate changes of parish affiliation and reported that since 2019, the UOC had initiated more than 100 lawsuits against oblast government decisions to register UOC congregations as OCU. For its part, the UOC “continued to question the legitimacy of the OCU and to allege that the OCU was ‘stealing’ its property”.
Among the faithful, in March 2022, surveys indicated that most agreed with the UOC severing ties with Moscow; in August 2022, “only 4 percent of Ukrainians who consider themselves as Orthodox Christians identified themselves with the UOC-MP”; and in December 2022, 54 percent supported a proposal to de-legalise the UOC-MP in Ukraine.
In December 2022, Ukraine’s President Zelensky announced a “crackdown on the operation of Moscow-affiliated Orthodox churches in Ukraine”. The declaration was made within hours of a Ukrainian Security Services raid of an Orthodox female monastery in Transcarpathia where agents discovered pamphlets “denying Ukraine’s right to independence” while emphasising that “Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus ‘cannot be divided.’” The decision was also built on previous Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) raids and reports that they had found evidence in UOC MP properties and clergy houses of Russian propaganda material, of Russian citizenship papers obtained by several UOC MP clerics, as well as Russian army-issued food. The government alleged that Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate (UOC MP) churches had become “distribution centers for propaganda, and intelligence sources for Russian spies and collaborators”. The president stated that national security officials “should intensify measures to identify and counteract the subversive activities of the Russian special services in the religious environment of Ukraine.”
Ukraine’s security services initiated over 40 counterintelligence measures against the UOC MP from which “criminal proceedings were instituted against 61 clergymen”; […] “17 officials of the UOC MP were sanctioned”; some “250 clerics of the Russian Orthodox Church were banned from entering Ukraine”; and Ukrainian citizenship was revoked for 19 UOC MP clergymen. The Ukrainian Defense Ministry reported that in March 2022, Ukraine had handed over two priests to Russia in exchange for prisoners of war.
Most faith groups in Ukraine continued to complain of opaque and inadequate procedures concerning property restitution stemming from the former Communist regime period. Christian, Jewish, and Muslim groups criticized several factors delaying the restitution process including “the Russian invasion, intercommunity competition for specific properties, current use of some properties by state institutions, the designation of some properties as historic landmarks, local governments disputing jurisdictional boundaries, and previous transfers of some properties to private ownership.” The Muslim community denounced delays to a restitution claim concerning a historic mosque in Mykolayiv, and Jewish religious leaders complained of an ongoing “illegal construction on the site of a historic Jewish cemetery in Uman” and the “ongoing operation of the Krakivskyy Market on the grounds of a historic Jewish cemetery in Lviv”.
For generations, small but steady groups of Muslims from Russia have been migrating to Ukraine driven by wars in the North Caucasus and attracted by less restrictive laws against non-mainstream Islamic groups that Russia has banned, such as Hizb ut-Tahrir. Over time, Ukrainian authorities have grown “increasingly leery of Russian-origin Muslims” with security forces monitoring “areas where migrants live and congregate”.
Kyiv’s Muslim community reiterated 2017 calls for additional free land in or near Kyiv for Islamic burials. The Muslim authorities consider this a legal right because “by law local authorities may designate cemetery land for the use of a specific religious group”. Kyiv Muslim are obliged to bury their dead in other towns.
The National Minorities Rights Monitoring Group (NMRMG) reported “a decrease in antisemitic violence, with one suspected case reported during the year compared with three cases in 2021” and “five cases of antisemitic vandalism, compared with 13 incidents during the same period in 2021”.
Following several attacks on the UOC St. Volodymyr’s Church in Lviv, including arson, OCU Primate Metropolitan Epiphanius I stated: “We do not support violence against the clergy, laity, or property of the Moscow Patriarchate solely based on their jurisdictional affiliation. At the same time, if someone among followers of that religious association is guilty of collaboration with the aggressor and serving the enemy’s interests, they should be brought to justice for specific offenses.”
Notwithstanding the challenges posed by the war, the Ukrainian Council of Churches and Religious Organizations (the UCCRO, representing more than 90 percent of Ukraine’s religious organisations) celebrated 25 years of cooperation promoting interfaith dialogue and national unity. The foremost issue remained the invasion and the religious situation in the occupied territories.
On 29 September 2022, amid the war in Ukraine, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy took part in a commemoration ceremony in Kyiv for the victims of Babyn Yar (Babiy Yar), one of the biggest single massacres of Jews during the Nazi Holocaust.
In December 2022, President Zelensky’s raised the profile of the State Service for Ethnic Policy and Freedom of Conscience appointing the well-known religious scholar Viktor Yelensky and placing the ministry directly under the supervision of the prime minister’s office.
Before the 2022 invasion, Jewish emigration from Ukraine to Israel had “slowed to 2,000 to 3,000 persons per year”. According to the Jewish Agency for Israel, from January to September 2022, 13,422 Ukrainian Jews emigrated to Israel.
During the period under review, there were cases of vandalism of Christian monuments, Holocaust memorials, Jewish cemeteries, synagogues, and Jehovah’s Witnesses’ Kingdom Halls. On the occasion of complaint, for the most part, police opened investigations.
Prospects for freedom of religion
The greatest challenge to religious freedom in Ukraine is the situation in the occupied territories. In the area controlled by the Kiev authorities, cases of religious discrimination are, to date, primarily incidents perpetrated against individuals, and not systemic violations of religious freedom.
Tragically, the war appears to have become evermore entrenched. Unlikely that the conflict will be resolved soon, the human rights abuses, including violations of religious freedom, will not lessen. The prospects remain negative.
Ukraine