1. Unity Without Merger: What Exactly Are We Talking About?
The word “unity” is often used in discussions about Ukrainian Orthodoxy as though its meaning were self-evident. Yet this is precisely where many misunderstandings begin.
For some, unity means the final liberation of church life in Ukraine from dependence associated with the Russian ecclesiastical centre. For others, it means the risk of losing a familiar parish, the language of worship, family memory, a church building, or the right to live according to their own church tradition. For some, it is primarily a question of canonical order. For others, it is a question of national security.
These experiences are not identical. But they cannot simply be dismissed as unimportant or “wrong.” As long as the word “unity” means liberation for some and capitulation for others, a shared conversation will remain impossible.
It is therefore worth distinguishing several things from the outset.
Coexistence is when communities with different ecclesiastical affiliations do not regard one another as enemies and do not try to remove the other side from the life of a village, town, or district.
Cooperation means helping people together: military personnel, the wounded, displaced persons, families of the fallen, children, people living alone, and the elderly. It does not require immediate agreement on every theological or canonical issue.
Dialogue means a willingness to speak honestly about the most difficult matters: ties with Moscow, responsibility, ecclesiastical status, experiences of injustice, fears, and the limits of possible compromise. Dialogue does not mean that everyone must immediately abandon their convictions. But it excludes the demand: first admit that you are wrong and worthless, and only then will we begin the conversation.
Reconciliation is a longer process. It begins not with forgetting, but with the rejection of humiliation. People may retain different assessments of the past, but they cease to treat the presence of the other as a cause for hatred.
Mutual ecclesiastical recognition and the full restoration of communion are even more complex questions. They cannot be resolved by goodwill alone because they concern theology, canon law, the structure of the Church, and the positions of global Orthodoxy. That is precisely why they should not be replaced with political slogans or rapid administrative decisions.
Finally, administrative unification is only one possible form of church unity, but it is not synonymous with it. The merger of structures may be formalized legally and yet fail to create trust. On the contrary, it may deepen resentment if it takes place through fear, pressure, or the devaluation of human experience.
Unity also has different levels. It begins with personal responsibility: not lying about others, not stigmatizing all members of a community because of the actions of particular individuals, and not rejoicing in another person’s pain. It continues at the parish level, where neighbours choose peace rather than hostility. It requires maturity at the diocesan and interjurisdictional levels, where permanent channels of communication and mediation are needed. It has a social dimension because church conflicts affect trust in Christianity and the unity of the country. Finally, it has a pan-Orthodox horizon because some questions cannot be resolved solely at the local level.
The Sophia Brotherhood proceeds from a simple conviction: Ukrainian Orthodoxy will not be healed through the forced absorption of some by others. But neither can it be healed by concealing dependencies, responsibility, and the truth about the war [1].
The first step toward unity is not to force everyone to become the same immediately. The first step is to create conditions in which no one must choose between truth, freedom of conscience, and human dignity. It is precisely within such a space that trust, cooperation, and, in time, deeper ecclesiastical understanding may emerge.
2. What Is Really Happening at the Local Level
The public image of church life in Ukraine is often shaped by the most acute stories: disputes outside churches, videos of clashes, court proceedings, and mutual accusations. These events are real. They cannot be minimized because behind each of them stand people, communities, grievances, and often years of mistrust.
But they do not describe the whole life of the country.
According to a survey conducted by the Razumkov Centre in November 2025, 58.8 per cent of respondents described relations among believers of different churches and religions in their locality as calm, while another 9.1 per cent described them as friendly. A total of 6.9 per cent considered them tense, and 2.8 per cent considered them conflictual [2].
These figures do not mean that the problem of division is insignificant. But they show that in territories controlled by Ukraine where no hostilities were taking place, there was no recorded mass perception of interreligious relations as conflictual. This does not exclude local conflicts, but it indicates that, for most respondents, interreligious relations in their place of residence were not characterized by constant tension or open confrontation [2].
Such everyday manifestations of coexistence are usually less visible in the public sphere than conflicts surrounding church buildings. At the same time, it is precisely these manifestations that sustain communities’ ability to live alongside one another during wartime.
However, no reassuring conclusion should be drawn from this as though the tension has already been overcome. Where tension does arise, it most often concerns relations between the Orthodox Church of Ukraine and the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. Among those respondents who described interreligious relations in their locality as tense or conflictual in 2025, 90.7 per cent pointed to tension between the Orthodox Church of Ukraine and the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate [2].
The problem, therefore, is not that Ukrainians are supposedly incapable of living alongside one another. The problem arises when a local dispute begins to be perceived as a struggle for survival: when a church building becomes a symbol of the final victory of one side and the humiliation of the other; when a legal decision is not accompanied by an honest conversation; when fear is fuelled by insults, rumours, or the language of collective guilt.
In such situations, it is easy for both sides to make mistakes.
Some may underestimate how painfully a particular community experiences the loss of its church building, familiar spiritual life, or right to be heard. Others may fail to see why, for many Ukrainians, the preservation of any non-transparent ties with the Russian ecclesiastical centre after the beginning of the full-scale war is unacceptable not only politically, but also morally.
That is why peaceful coexistence does not mean indifference. It does not require the abandonment of criticism, the renunciation of a community’s right to change jurisdiction, or the refusal to demand an honest discussion of responsibility. But it does require a different way of acting: not turning complex questions into a pretext for despising people.
For the ecclesiastical future of Ukraine, it is important to preserve what already exists: the ability of many communities to live without daily hostility. This is not weakness or avoidance of problems. It is the foundation without which no major decisions will have lasting force.
When we speak about unity, we should not imagine only the summit: a nationwide church agreement, a change of status, or the end of disputes. Unity is also formed from below: in whether neighbours can remain neighbours; whether communities preserve human dignity amid disagreement; whether we are capable of not regarding a person as guilty or hostile solely because of their ecclesiastical affiliation.
3. Why the Word “Unity” Can Cause Fear
An appeal to unity sounds convincing only until a simple question arises: on what terms?
For some Orthodox Ukrainians, unity means freeing church life from any dependence associated with the Moscow Patriarchate and the ideology of the “Russian world.” Since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion, this has been perceived not as a secondary dispute, but as a matter of moral clarity and national security.
For others, the word “unity” may mean something entirely different: the loss of a familiar community, the right to have a voice, a church building, spiritual experience, or even the feeling that their many years of church history are being declared shameful. Such experiences do not cancel the need for truth and responsibility. But they cannot be ignored when reconciliation is at stake.
The first fear is the loss of one’s own ecclesiastical identity.
For a person, a parish is not a name in a register. It is the place where children were baptized, parents were buried, and prayers were offered during illness, war, and loss. It is familiar faces, the accustomed rhythm of worship, the voice of the priest, church singing, the calendar, and sometimes the language in which the family prayed for generations.
Habit in itself is not a final argument against change. Church life can and must change when truth, freedom, and responsibility require it. But change that a person experiences as the erasure of their memory will almost inevitably provoke resistance. This is especially true when no one explains what exactly is changing, why the change is needed, and what place that person will have in the new reality.
The second fear is the loss of the right to be heard.
Ukrainian legislation recognizes the right of a religious community freely to change its affiliation. The decision must be made by the general meeting of the community in accordance with a prescribed procedure. At the same time, the law provides rights for those who disagree with the majority’s decision: they may establish a separate community and resolve issues concerning the use of property in accordance with the established procedure [3].
However, a legal norm does not remove human anxiety. Specific questions immediately arise within a particular community: who has the right to vote? Was the vote genuinely open? Did outsiders take part? Will those who disagreed retain the possibility of continuing to worship, rather than merely having a formal right to establish a new legal entity?
When there are no answers to these questions, even a lawful procedure may not be perceived as fair. And mistrust of the procedure almost always becomes mistrust of people.
The third fear is the loss of dignity through a collective label.
Ukrainian society has every right to demand an honest answer to questions about ties with the Russian ecclesiastical centre. In the Resolution of its Council of 27 May 2022, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church declared its “full independence and autonomy,” while at the same time formulating its own preconditions for dialogue with the Orthodox Church of Ukraine. These preconditions may be criticized as unacceptable or unrealistic. Yet the very fact that they exist shows that the problem cannot be reduced to a simple change of name or subordination [4].
It is unacceptable when a religious structure evades responsibility for real ties, propaganda, or cooperation with the aggressor. But it is equally dangerous to transfer the responsibility of particular leaders, priests, or organizations to every parishioner. A person who comes to church does not automatically become the bearer of someone else’s political ideology.
Collective stigmatization has one predictable consequence: it does not persuade people, but locks them within fear and resentment. A person who is told, “You are already guilty,” is unlikely to hear an invitation to an honest conversation.
The fourth fear is that the necessary protection of the state will turn into unlimited pressure.
In its statement of 15 July 2022, the Kyiv Metropolis of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine defended the right of religious communities voluntarily to leave the authority of structures of the Moscow Patriarchate and emphasized that the right freely to choose an ecclesiastical centre is guaranteed by law and connected with freedom of religion and belief [5]. In the context of war, this position has an understandable moral and social foundation.
But the freedom of a community and the security of the state must not become justifications for humiliating particular people. The state may demand transparency, apply legal mechanisms, and prosecute crimes. A community may change its affiliation. Yet neither the state nor the majority within a community can create trust by decree.
This is where the boundary lies between just renewal and new trauma. Unity does not require everyone immediately to cease having questions, doubts, or pain. It requires something else: that no one be forced to choose between the truth about the war and the right to preserve human dignity.
Only then will the difficult discussion of responsibility, freedom, ecclesiastical order, and Ukraine’s future cease to be a struggle over who can force whom into silence.
4. Three Experiences: Dialogue, Escalation, Agreement
Discussions about unity easily remain abstract until we look at specific situations. It is at the local level that one can see that church conflict may develop in entirely different ways: through an attempt to talk, through confrontation, or through a difficult agreement.
These three paths are not ready-made models for the whole country. But they show that outcomes depend not only on canons, laws, or decisions of governing centres. Much depends on whether people are prepared to see the other side not as an obstacle, but as fellow citizens and Christians with whom they will have to continue living alongside one another.
Dialogue: The Experience of Saint Sophia of Kyiv
On 5 July 2022, an informal meeting of priests of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine and the Ukrainian Orthodox Church took place in the Metropolitan’s Residence on the grounds of Saint Sophia of Kyiv. Twenty-one clerics from both ecclesiastical communities participated. The result was a Declaration of Understanding [6].
This event was not an official dialogue between synods. Its participants did not represent all communities of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine and the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and could not make decisions on their behalf. The Declaration did not resolve disputes concerning canonical status, the Sacraments, changes of jurisdiction, or church structure.
For that reason, it should not be presented as the beginning of an already accomplished unification.
Its significance lies elsewhere. People from two ecclesiastical communities gathered not to demand one another’s capitulation. In the document, they jointly condemned Russia’s war against Ukraine and the role of the Moscow Patriarchate in justifying it. They also recognized the need to renounce aggression, stereotypes, prejudice, and the language of ultimatums [6].
It is no less important that the Declaration did not conceal difficult questions. Its participants directly named differences in attitudes toward changes of jurisdiction, the possibility of concelebration, canonical status, and the Sacraments. At the same time, they stated that these problems should be resolved through negotiation rather than contempt or force [6].
This is the minimum culture of dialogue: to disagree, but not to lie; to name the problem, but not to humiliate the person; not to promise rapid unification, but not to declare every conversation an act of betrayal.
Escalation: The Experience of Cherkasy
A different path was demonstrated by the events of 17 October 2024 near Saint Michael’s Cathedral in Cherkasy. Following the announcement that the cathedral was transferring to the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, a fight broke out between representatives of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine and believers of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. The police opened criminal proceedings on suspicion of hooliganism. The next day, twenty-four people contacted the police, twenty of whom reported bodily injuries [7].
Each side explained the event in its own way. Representatives of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine referred to the formally registered transfer of the community and documents concerning ownership of the church building. Representatives of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church disagreed with the transfer of the cathedral and stated that they would defend it [7]. These disagreements have legal, ecclesiastical, and human dimensions that cannot honestly be contained within a single short formula.
But something is clear without further interpretation: when a church dispute turns into a fight, neither side achieves a genuine victory.
Even where the question of ownership or affiliation has a legal answer, violence leaves another legacy: fear, resentment, a sense of experienced humiliation, and a desire for revenge. Afterwards, people remember not the contents of documents, but the shouting, injuries, locked church doors, and the feeling that they were treated as enemies.
Cherkasy did not demonstrate that every change of jurisdiction inevitably leads to violence. It demonstrated that without advance communication, clear procedures, mediation, and security guarantees, a conflict can quickly destroy even what could have been resolved by legal means.
Agreement: The Experience of Perehonivka
In Perehonivka in the Kirovohrad region, the situation developed along a different path. The decision for the local community to transfer to the Orthodox Church of Ukraine had been made as early as 2019, but the church building continued for a long time to be used by the community of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. Following negotiations, the parties agreed to hold services alternately: one Sunday the Orthodox Church of Ukraine community celebrates, and the next Sunday the Ukrainian Orthodox Church community does so [8].
According to Suspilne, the church building legally belongs to the community of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, while the idea of alternating services was proposed by representatives of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. The agreement became possible because both sides agreed not to aggravate the situation and to seek a form of peaceful coexistence [8].
This is not an example of complete ecclesiastical reconciliation. No one abolished the theological or canonical differences. The distinction between the two communities did not disappear. But people refused to make the church building a symbol of the final defeat of the other side.
This is where the practical value of such a compromise lies. Alternating services cannot be mechanically transferred to every village or town: the legal status of church buildings, the number of parishioners, the positions of priests, calendars, and local circumstances differ. Yet the experience of Perehonivka shows that an intermediate solution can exist between forced displacement and indefinite hostility.
These three stories do not provide grounds for simple optimism. Dialogue does not guarantee agreement. An arrangement does not eliminate differences. Law by itself does not restore mutual respect.
But they reveal a simple pattern. Where the other side is recognized as a conversation partner, space for the future emerges. Where it is seen only as a force that must be broken, a new wound appears.
That is why Ukrainian Orthodoxy needs not only decisions “from above.” It needs local mechanisms that make it possible to speak before a dispute turns into conflict and conflict turns into hostility.
5. The State Between Security and Freedom of Conscience
War does not place church life beyond the sphere of responsibility. When a religious centre in the aggressor state supports the war against Ukraine or provides it with ideological justification, the state cannot treat this as a purely internal theological dispute.
It was in this context that Law No. 3894-IX, “On the Protection of the Constitutional Order in the Sphere of Religious Organizations,” was adopted. The law establishes special rules concerning foreign religious organizations connected with the aggressor state and supporting its armed aggression. At the same time, it explicitly emphasizes that its provisions may not be interpreted as restricting a person’s right to profess a religion, observe religious practices, or perform rites [9].
This distinction is important. Ukraine has the right to protect itself from the organizational, political, and propaganda influence of the aggressor state. But the protection of the state must not turn into the persecution of people merely because of their religious affiliation.
In cases concerning possible indications of affiliation with a foreign religious organization, the law provides for a separate procedure. The State Service of Ukraine for Ethnopolitics and Freedom of Conscience conducts an examination and, if relevant indications are established, issues an order to remedy the violations. Within the period prescribed by law, the religious organization must remedy the specified violations and submit a report with supporting materials. If the report is not submitted or does not confirm that the violations have been remedied, and there are no grounds for withdrawing the order, the State Service adopts a decision recognizing the organization as affiliated [3].
At the same time, this procedure does not exhaust all grounds for terminating a religious organization. The law also provides for other cases in which an application may be made to a court, including violations of legislation, systematic violations of the procedure for public religious events, propaganda of the ideology of the “Russian world,” or other grounds defined by law [3].
In 2025, the State Service of Ukraine for Ethnopolitics and Freedom of Conscience conducted an examination concerning the Kyiv Metropolis of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, issued it an order to remedy violations on 17 July, and on 27 August adopted a decision recognizing the Kyiv Metropolis of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church as affiliated with a foreign religious organization whose activities are prohibited in Ukraine [10; 11].
At the same time, this decision of the State Service is not a final answer to all ecclesiastical, social, or legal questions. As of 24 June 2026, case No. 855/11/25 had not been concluded. On 19 May 2026, the Administrative Court of Cassation within the Supreme Court allowed the appeal of the Kyiv Metropolis of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church against the procedural ruling of the Sixth Administrative Court of Appeal of 30 October 2025, set it aside, and returned the case to that court for continued consideration. This decision concerned a procedural issue relating to a counterclaim; the Supreme Court did not rule on the merits of whether the Kyiv Metropolis of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church should be terminated. Thus, the question of its termination remains under judicial consideration [12].
This precision matters for church peace. State security requires clear decisions, but clarity is not the same as simplification. Complex reality cannot be reduced to two slogans: either “any state intervention is persecution of the faith,” or “every parishioner of a particular community is the bearer of foreign political loyalty.”
Both formulas destroy the capacity to think.
A religious organization, its leaders, or particular clergy members may bear legal and moral responsibility for specific actions, propaganda, cooperation with occupation authorities, or failure to comply with lawful requirements. But the legal responsibility of a particular person must be based on individually established circumstances, not merely on the name of the church they attend.
Likewise, one should not expect a state decision to provide what it cannot provide. The law can define the limits of what is permissible, establish procedures, require transparency, and refer a dispute to a court. But it cannot order people to trust one another. It cannot heal grievances, fears, and years of mutual alienation through a single act. It cannot replace pastoral responsibility, honest dialogue, or the work of communities on their own culture.
This is the difficult but necessary combination of two principles. Freedom of conscience must not serve as a cover for dependence on the aggressor or for the justification of war. At the same time, security policy must not become a basis for collective humiliation, arbitrariness, or contempt for the right of a person to be heard.
The state must defend Ukraine. Churches must answer for the truth, their ties, and their conduct. Society must ensure that the struggle for security does not lose what it is intended to protect: human dignity, freedom, and justice.
6. The Steps of Reconciliation: What Is Possible Before Full Ecclesiastical Understanding
Full ecclesiastical understanding does not arise through a single synodal decision, law, or change of the sign on a church building. It requires time, trust, and the experience of shared responsibility. But this does not mean that nothing can be done before a final settlement.
There are things that can be done now.
The first step is the rejection of violence as a means of resolving church disputes.
No legal, canonical, or historical argument can justify beatings, intimidation, the disruption of services, or the humiliation of people outside a church. If a community has a legal position, it must defend it through documents, negotiations, and the courts, not through a crowd. If people disagree with a decision, they have the right to challenge it, but not to turn a sacred place into a site of physical confrontation.
This is not “neutrality” between truth and falsehood. It is the recognition that violence almost always leaves a new conflict behind, even when someone formally achieves what they wanted.
The second step is honest procedures and respect for the minority.
In communities where the issue of changing ecclesiastical affiliation is raised, people must understand the rules in advance: who is a member of the community, how meetings are convened, how a decision is made, and what its consequences will be for property and liturgical life. Legislation provides guarantees both for a community that changes its affiliation and for those members who disagree with the majority’s decision [3].
For church peace, not only formal legality matters, but also a sense of justice. People must see that they have not been deprived of their voice, deceived through procedure, or excluded from spiritual life merely because they found themselves in the minority.
The third step is local mediation before escalation begins.
Most disputes should not reach the police, television cameras, or physical confrontations. Permanent contact groups are needed at diocesan and local levels: representatives of communities, clergy, local authorities, lawyers, and, where possible, independent mediators. Their task is not to resolve all canonical questions instead of the Church. Their task is to begin the conversation in time, reduce tension, and find a practical solution that humiliates neither side.
Such solutions may include separate schedules for the use of a church building, a transitional period for a community, security guarantees during meetings, or assistance in finding another place of worship.
The example of Perehonivka shows that even after a prolonged conflict, communities can agree on alternating services. This is neither a universal model nor complete reconciliation. But it is an example of how abandoning the logic of “all or nothing” makes it possible to preserve peace in a particular village [8].
The fourth step is shared service to society.
Orthodox Christians of different jurisdictions may disagree on the most acute church questions, but this does not prevent them from serving together those who suffer because of the war and need support. Shared service does not replace theological dialogue. It does not cancel responsibility for the past. But it returns the church conversation to its central concern: are we capable of standing beside a person who needs help?
Where people work together for others, it becomes easier to see not an abstract “foreign structure,” but a concrete Christian, neighbour, and fellow citizen.
The fifth step is dialogue without the demand for prior capitulation.
The very fact of dialogue does not make difficult questions secondary. On the contrary, it is precisely dependencies, responsibility for the past, experiences of injustice, and the future structure of church life that must be discussed.
But dialogue does not begin with the formula: “First admit that you have no right to exist, and then you will be heard.” Such language creates neither repentance nor trust. It merely closes off the possibility of change.
The Declaration of Understanding signed at Saint Sophia of Kyiv in 2022 did not remove theological and canonical contradictions. Yet it recorded a shared aspiration to conduct the conversation without aggression and contempt [6]. This position is a necessary precondition for any serious dialogue.
The sixth step is support for a conciliar culture within church communities themselves.
Unity will not be sustainable if decisions are always made without the participation of the laity and uncomfortable questions are regarded as signs of disloyalty. Communities must learn to listen not only to those who hold authority or speak most loudly. Priests must be able to speak about problems without fear, while laypeople must be able to ask questions about property, governance, church ties, and social responsibility.
This applies to every church structure. Open conciliarity is not a weakness of governance, but a condition of trust.
Finally, a pan-Orthodox horizon is also necessary. Ukrainian communities cannot independently resolve all questions concerning canonical recognition, Eucharistic communion, and the place of Ukrainian Orthodoxy in the universal Church. But external authority cannot replace Ukrainian work on trust. Even the best formula proposed from outside will not be viable if fear, humiliation, and an unwillingness to hear one another remain at the local level.
The steps of reconciliation do not promise a rapid conclusion. They merely show a realistic direction: from security to trust, from conflict to conversation, from the struggle for control to responsibility before people.
7. The Right to a Complex Solution
Ukrainian Orthodoxy has no simple way out of the present crisis. There is no single solution that will simultaneously resolve the question of ties with Moscow, restore trust among communities, settle property disputes, answer canonical controversies, and heal the memory of mutual grievances.
This must be acknowledged not in order to give up. On the contrary, only the rejection of the illusion of a rapid conclusion makes responsible work possible.
Ukraine has the right to demand a complete break with the religious centres of the aggressor state, transparency in church ties, and responsibility for supporting the war. Communities have the right freely to determine their ecclesiastical affiliation. People who have suffered from violence, pressure, or falsehood have the right to be heard.
But these rights must not become a means of destroying the other.
A complex solution means defending the state without despising the person; demanding responsibility without replacing it with a collective label; recognizing the right of the majority without forgetting the minority; seeking ecclesiastical unity without reducing it to administrative absorption.
This does not provide quick victories. It requires honest procedures, local mediation, the rejection of violence, and a willingness to speak about the most painful matters without the language of final condemnation.
The Declaration of Understanding signed at Saint Sophia of Kyiv in 2022 did not become an agreement on unification and did not remove theological or canonical contradictions. But its participants demonstrated that even during a great war it is possible not to reject the possibility of conversation before it begins and to seek the common good [6].
The future unity of Ukrainian Orthodoxy will become possible not when one structure declares itself the victor. It will begin when truth is not separated from mercy, freedom from responsibility, or fidelity to one’s tradition from respect for the human dignity of the other.
Sources
- Sophia Brotherhood. “About the Brotherhood.”
https://sofiyske-bratstvo.org/pro-bratstvo/ - Razumkov Centre. “Religion and the Church in Ukrainian Society: 2000–2025.” 2026.
https://razumkov.org.ua/images/2026/03/01/2025-Religion-UKR.pdf - Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine. Law of Ukraine “On Freedom of Conscience and Religious Organizations,” No. 987-XII. 23 April 1991, current version.
https://zakon.rada.gov.ua/laws/show/987-12 - Council of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. “Resolution of the Council of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of 27 May 2022.” 2022.
https://news.church.ua/2022/05/27/postanova-soboru-ukrajinskoji-pravoslavnoji-cerkvi-vid-27-travnya-2022-roku/ - Kyiv Metropolis of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine. “Statement on Obstruction of Religious Communities Seeking to Leave the Authority of the Moscow Patriarchate.” 15 July 2022.
https://www.pomisna.info/uk/vsi-novyny/zayava-shhodo-pereshkodzhannya-religijnym-gromadam-u-vyhodi-z-pid-vlady-moskovskogo-patriarhatu/ - Participants in the Informal Meeting of Clergy of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and the Orthodox Church of Ukraine. “Declaration of Understanding Between the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and the Orthodox Church of Ukraine.” 5 July 2022; published 6 July 2022.
https://sofiyske-bratstvo.org/deklaracziya-porozuminnya-upcz-ta-pczu/ - Suspilne Cherkasy. “Following the Fight Near a Church in Cherkasy, Twenty-Four People Filed Reports with the Police.” 18 October 2024.
https://suspilne.media/cherkasy/860521-bijka-bila-hramu-v-cerkasah-do-policii-iz-zaavami-zvernulisa-24-ludini/ - Suspilne Kropyvnytskyi. “One Week for the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, One Week for the Ukrainian Orthodox Church: Religious Communities at a Church in the Kirovohrad Region Agree on Alternating Services.” 19 February 2024.
https://suspilne.media/kropyvnytskiy/687986-tizden-pcu-tizden-upc-v-odnij-iz-cerkov-kirovogradsini-religijni-gromadi-domovilis-pro-pocergovi-bogosluzinna/ - Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine. Law of Ukraine No. 3894-IX “On the Protection of the Constitutional Order in the Sphere of Religious Organizations.” 20 August 2024.
https://zakon.rada.gov.ua/laws/show/3894-20 - State Service of Ukraine for Ethnopolitics and Freedom of Conscience. “The Kyiv Metropolis of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church Has Been Issued an Order to Remedy Violations.” 17 July 2025.
https://dess.gov.ua/kyivskiy-mytropolii-upts-vyneseno-prypys-pro-usunennia-porushen/ - State Service of Ukraine for Ethnopolitics and Freedom of Conscience. “The Kyiv Metropolis of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church Has Been Recognized as Affiliated with a Foreign Religious Organization Whose Activities Are Prohibited in Ukraine.” 28 August 2025.
https://dess.gov.ua/kyyivsku-mytropoliyu-ukrayinskoyi-pravoslavnoyi-tserkvy-vyznano-afiliyovanoiu-z-inozemnoiu-relihiynoiu-orhanizatsiieiu/ - Administrative Court of Cassation within the Supreme Court. “Ruling of 19 May 2026 in Case No. 855/11/25.”
https://iplex.com.ua/doc.php?regnum=136810199
