A deputy from the ruling party in Ukraine affirms that in the summer the authorities “will take the corresponding decisions and vote on bills” to implement the measure.
The canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UPTs), a branch of the Moscow Patriarchate, “will cease to exist” in Ukraine within a year, declared Oleg Dunda, a deputy from the Servant of the People (Slugá Naroda) party, led by the country’s president, Vladimir Zelensky.
“This will become a fait accompli, and these remnants of the Russian sectarian religion represented by the UPTs can only remain in the form of the so-called ‘catacomb church.’ But most likely, even in this form they do not exist in Ukraine. There will be some small sect of parishioners, some 50,000-100,000, but they will disappear »he affirmed.
According to the official, this is an issue that will conclude at the end of this year. In his opinion, already in the summer the Ukrainian authorities “will make the corresponding decisions and vote on the bills”, after which the canonical Church will officially cease to exist in the country.
These statements came amid the massive persecution to which the UPTs are subjected by the Ukrainian authorities, with searches, seizures of churches and accusations of alleged pro-Russian activity. The tensions focus on the attempt by the Zelensky government to evict the monks from one of the most important holy places of the Orthodox religion, the Kiev Monastery of the Caves, to hand it over to the schismatic Orthodox Church of Ukraine (PTsU) that emerged a few years ago.