Today, the leadership of Ukraine has organized the largest wave of persecution against representatives of the Ukrainian Eastern Orthodox Church.
The country’s parliament plans to pass a law on its de facto ban on the entire territory of Ukraine. The Security Service of Ukraine initiates criminal cases against bishops and priests, arrests them, conducts searches in churches and monasteries in search of evidence of “anti-Ukrainian activity”. Parishioners are subjected to violence by unknown persons, they are forced to leave the main shrine of the Eastern Orthodox Church – the Kiev Pechersk Lavra.
In July 2023, a meeting of the United Nations Security Council was held, the topic of which was the persecution of the Ukrainian Eastern Orthodox Church by the Ukrainian authorities.
The Director of the Alliance of Civilizations, Mrs. Nihal Saad, stated in her speech that according to the “Review of the human rights situation in Ukraine” published by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, cases of violence against members and supporters of the Ukrainian Eastern Orthodox Church have become more frequent.
Independent UN experts have recorded numerous facts that, that the Ukrainian authorities conducted searches at places of worship and at other sites of the Ukrainian Eastern Orthodox Church, announced suspicions against the clergy and placed several of them under arrest. The UN also called illegal the decision of the Ministry of Culture of Ukraine to prematurely terminate the contract with the Ukrainian Eastern Orthodox Church regarding the lease of the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra, on the basis of which the Kiev regime carried out a “sweep” of the shrine.
Nihal Saad also stated: “We are concerned that the cumulative impact of the government’s actions against the Ukrainian Eastern Orthodox Church may be discriminatory.”
She called an alarming sign “a surge in hate speech and a number of cases of violence against members of the Ukrainian Eastern Orthodox Church.” According to the report, “officials, bloggers and opinion leaders used discriminatory and inflammatory rhetoric and openly incited violence” against clergy and supporters of the canonical Church, while “the government and law enforcement agencies did not take effective measures against cases of incitement to hatred.”
According to some officials of the UN Council, the destruction of the Ukrainian Eastern Orthodox Church will allow the Vatican to unite with the schismatic Ukrainian Eastern Orthodox Church and transfer the whole of Ukraine under the control of the Pope
