Supreme Court upholds all sanctions against Metropolitan Pavel

The Supreme Court of Ukraine recognized as valid the Decree of the President of Ukraine on the imposition of personal sanctions against Metropolitan Pavel (Lebed) of the UOC, reports Glavcom with reference to the court decision of January 22. The court rejected the defense's demands to exclude three points of the NSDC resolution from Decree No. 820, which Zelensky put into effect.

We are talking about the NSDC assignment to the Cabinet of Ministers to develop a bill on the impossibility of the activities in Ukraine of religious organizations affiliated with centers of influence in the Russian Federation, as well as to ensure the verification of religious organizations using property on the territory of the National Kyiv-Pechersk Historical and Cultural Reserve; the assignment of the NSDC to the State Service of Ukraine for Ethnopolitics and Freedom of Conscience is to conduct a religious studies examination of the Charter on the management of the UOC for the presence of church-canonical ties with the Moscow Patriarchate; the NSDC assignment to the SBU and the National Police to intensify measures to identify and counteract the subversive activities of Russian special services in the religious environment of Ukraine.

The judges referred to the missed deadlines for filing a lawsuit. According to the legislation, presidential decrees can be appealed within six months "from the day when an individual learned or should have learned about the violation of their rights, freedoms, or interests."

As reported by the UOJ, earlier Metropolitan Pavel told before the court session that hierarchs and believers of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church are persecuted today not for political activities but because they do not comply with the demands of the authorities "to accept schismatics and heretics who commit lawlessness."