Kyiv District Court says UOC remains part of ROC

The Kyiv District Administrative Court said that the UOC is part of the Russian Orthodox Church, the court said in its ruling of 15 May 2023.

"The court considers that within the framework of this administrative case, the plaintiffs have not proved by appropriate and sufficient evidence the circumstances of their non-inclusion in the structure (component part) of the ROC, while the information assessed by the defendant, taken together, states that the UOC as a religious association, to which the plaintiffs belong, is a part (component part) of the ROC," the court said in the ruling.

The ruling was made regarding a lawsuit filed by the Kyiv Metropolis of the UOC and the Pochaiv Lavra against the Ministry of Culture, which was filed back in 2019. Representatives of the UOC challenged the Law of Ukraine "On Freedom of Conscience and Religious Organisations" and the order of the Ministry of Culture, which obliged them to amend their statutes and "enshrine the canonical connection with the Russian Church".

The plaintiffs stressed that the Ministry of Culture's religious expertise conducted in 2019 contained numerous deficiencies (no reference to the statutes of religious organisations, no information on the time and/or timing of the relevant expertise; no information on the persons who are experts of the Ministry of Culture; no analysis of documents, including the statutes of religious organisations).

Also, the representative of the Kyiv Metropolis of the UOC noted that the Ministry of Culture conducted monitoring, not research, based on statistical data, which were not attached to the conclusion of the religious expertise. Therefore, the conclusion of the religious expertise "does not contain a single argument, justification or argument that the UOC religious association is part of the ROC”.

However, the court concluded that "all arguments of the plaintiffs, with which the latter justify their claims, have not been confirmed in the course of the dispute resolution on the merits and are such that they cannot form the basis for a decision on satisfying the claims".

In addition, the Kyiv District Administrative Court with this decision has overturned the ruling of the Kyiv District Administrative Court of 22 April 2019 which prohibited registrars from making changes to carry out any registration actions and records in relation to religious organisations of the UOC.

The court's ruling will come into force after the deadline for filing an appeal with the Sixth Administrative Court of Appeal has expired. There are 30 days for this.

As earlier reported, Klitschko promised to take away land from the UOC after the adoption of the anti-church law.