Bill on banning Russian Orthodox Church submitted to Ukraine’s parliament

By Burc Eruygur

ISTANBUL (AA) - The European Solidarity party in Ukraine, led by former President Petro Poroshenko, announced that it has drafted a bill on banning the activities of the Russian Orthodox Church in the country and submitted it to parliament.

“On the initiative of (lawmaker) Mykola Kniazhytskyi, a draft bill has been registered to ban the activities of the Russian Orthodox Church on the territory of Ukraine,” Iryna Gerashchenko, co-chair of the party, said on Facebook.

Gerashchenko said that the bill also demands a complete ban on any religious organizations and institutions that are part of or under the influence of the Russian Orthodox Church.

“The purpose of the draft bill is to prevent threats to the national security of Ukraine and to ensure order because for too long the Russian Orthodox Church has conducted anti-Ukrainian and subversive activities and advocated all the actions of the criminal Russian regime,” she said.

She said that her party sent an appeal to the Ukrainian government demanding it to terminate the lease with the Interior Ministry, under which the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra is used by “Kremlin agents.”

“The time has come to stop flirting with the Moscow Patriarchate because it is not a church, but an ideological organization for the promotion of the Russian world,” she added.

On Tuesday, Ukraine’s state security service (SBU) raided the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra among other monasteries in the country, such as the Korets Holy Trinity Monastery and the premises of the Sarnenskyi-Polska Eparchy.

The SBU announced early on Wednesday that it found pro-Russian literature, cash and forged documents during raids on buildings of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which said in May that it cut its ties with the Russian Orthodox Church in the wake of Russia’s war on Ukraine.