State Ethnopolitics expert: UOC believers are no less than 5-6 million
Liudmyla Filipovych said that 60 criminal cases against clerics of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church compared to the total number of 12,000 clerics is "certainly not many".
Religionist and expert of the State Ethnopolitics Service Liudmyla Filipovych told the resource "Apostrophe" that at least 5-6 million people identify themselves as members of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.
"There are no exact statistics on the number of believers, but, according to our data, in Ukraine parishioners of the UOC-MP account for no less than than 5-6 million, young and old," said Filipovych.
Commenting on the SBU statements about open criminal cases against clerics of the UOC, she said that as a percentage of the total number of clerics of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, it is not much.
"60 priests out of 12,000 is certainly not much. But this does not mean that the SBU is working badly," Filipovych said and expressed confidence that many clerics are charged under several articles at once.
As earlier reported, according to the ex-advisor to the head of the OP Arestovych, UOC believers are 6 million, and the authorities behave "like idiots" towards them.
