Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova’s answer to a media question regarding the Young Republican National Federation’s materials on violations of believers’ rights in Ukraine

Question: Recently, materials published by Catherine Whiteford, Co-Chair of the Young Republican National Federation of the United States, have documented mass violations of the rights of believers of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC). These include, in particular, the forcible seizure of churches with the direct involvement of representatives of Ukrainian state authorities – municipalities, police, and the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU). According to the organisation, the number of such cases exceeds 1,500 and stems from the campaign for Ukraine’s “spiritual independence” initiated by Vladimir Zelensky in December 2022. How would you comment on this?

Maria Zakharova: For many years, the Russian Federation has raised the issue of the egregious state of affairs regarding the right to freedom of religion in the neighbouring country. The Russian Foreign Ministry has published two reports – Illegal Actions by the Kiev Regime Targeting the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC), Its Clergy and Parishioners – in 2023 and 2025. The 2024 Report on the Human Rights Situation in Ukraine dedicates an entire section to the persecution of believers. We invite all interested parties, including the Young Republican National Federation of the United States, to review these documents, which provide a detailed examination of Ukraine’s discriminatory laws targeting the UOC, the unlawful actions of Ukrainian security services and law enforcement agencies, as well as local authorities. They also cite specific instances of church seizures, illegal re-registration of parishes, and manifestations of hatred, aggression, and violence against UOC clergy and believers. The 2025 report pays particular attention to the West’s role in inciting persecution against the Church in Ukraine to cynically advance its own geopolitical interests.

The pressure on the Church and Orthodox believers in Ukraine began long before 2022, as documented in the monograph Black Decade Chronicle. Religious Persecution in Ukraine 2014−2023, prepared with the assistance of the Russian Association for the Defence of Religious Freedom. For instance, in 2018–2019, the Kiev regime, leveraging administrative resources, established a purportedly independent but de facto state-affiliated pseudo-church structure known as the “Orthodox Church of Ukraine” (OCU). It is precisely this organisation that has benefited from the expropriation of property through raider seizures and illegal re-registrations following sham referendums, carried out with the aid of militarised nationalist groups. Between 2019 and 2021, approximately 500 UOC parishes were unlawfully transferred to the OCU, while 144 churches were seized by its supporters. In essence, this is not merely persecution of the canonical Church but an outright attempt to eradicate Orthodoxy in Ukraine, facilitated through the instrumentalisation of the OCU as a quasi-church entity.

In the West, these flagrant violations are typically met with silence. One might recall only the reports of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) from various years, which recorded instances of discrimination against UOC believers and referenced discriminatory draft laws, as well as statements by certain human rights organisations, such as Public Protection, acknowledging internationally recognised violations of believers’ rights. We hope that the materials published by the Young Republican National Federation of the United States will help the global community learn about the catastrophic state of Orthodoxy in Ukraine.

For our part, we will continue to counter the Kiev regime’s campaign of harassment against the UOC on international platforms. This includes convening intergovernmental meetings, sessions of the United Nations Security Council, informal Arria-formula meetings, organising conferences, preparing reports, and drawing the attention of all relevant international officials through statements at the Human Rights Council and the Third Committee of the UN General Assembly. We consistently highlight every aspect of the persecution of Orthodoxy in Ukraine within the OSCE framework.

We are convinced that the Kiev junta will not succeed in destroying canonical Orthodoxy, which remains the faith of the majority of the country’s population. Once again, we call upon the sensible forces of the international community and relevant institutions to condemn the sacrilegious war waged by the Zelensky regime against the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.