(RNS) — On Tuesday (Aug. 20), the Ukrainian Parliament passed long-threatened legislation meant to ban the country’s Moscow-linked Orthodox Church and any faith groups supporting Russia’s invasion. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has called the bill a “duty” to “guarantee Ukrainian spiritual independence” and is expected to sign it into law soon, launching state intervention into a largely ecclesiastical battle.
In doing so, Zelenskyy is risking Ukraine’s access to Western military aid, especially crucial U.S. aid. Signing the law will give ammunition to the worst slurs of anti-Ukrainian forces in American political life.
The Russian Orthodox Church traces its origins to ninth-century Kyiv, now Ukraine’s capital. The majority of Ukrainians are Orthodox Christians, divided between two church bodies: a newer church formed with Ukrainian nationalism and an older church tied to Moscow. The Orthodox Church of Ukraine was formed by churches that broke from Russian control during Ukraine’s independence. The jurisdiction was granted autocephaly or independence in 2019 by the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, called “first among equals” among Eastern Orthodox leaders. The recognition dented centuries of Moscow’s religious dominance in Ukraine as parishes switched loyalties, and its legitimacy has been fiercely rejected by Russia’s Patriarch Kirill and the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, sparking a deep conflict within global Orthodoxy.
While the UOC declared itself independent from Moscow three months after Russia’s 2022 invasion, many believe the church remains canonically tied to the Russian Orthodox Church and still harbors loyalty to Russia. Ukraine has prosecuted more than 100 UOC clerics, with charges ranging from anti-Ukrainian speech to espionage.
Charging priests with spying might seem like a groundless attack on members of an unpopular religious group, but the Russian Orthodox Church has a history of weaponizing itself as soft power for the state. There is also evidence that the Russian Orthodox Church is frequently used as an outpost for Russian intelligence efforts. This has led Estonia to pass similar legislation against the church.
The problem is that Ukraine’s legislation skirts the line between addressing a legitimate national security interest and suppressing a religious minority merely for having the taint of the “foreign.” Anyone concerned with freedom of conscience and belief can find legitimate reasons to condemn criminal charges over opinions expressed on social media or from the pulpit, which has been the case of many UOC clerics jailed since the invasion.
Ukraine’s Parliament passed the legislation with a wide margin despite the potential ramifications. The country’s defense efforts rely primarily on the large amounts of military aid it has received from Western nations, mostly from the U.S. In gathering this aid, Ukraine has leaned heavily into a self-image as a newly liberalized democracy, a bulwark against Russian aggression and authoritarianism. It is as a liberal, pluralist democracy that Ukraine has sought not-yet-granted membership in NATO and the European Union.
That this self-narrativizing on the international stage has not been entirely persuasive is never more evident than in how contentious the continuation of American aid to Ukraine remains. Republicans are largely opposed or indifferent to the Ukrainian cause. The Republican nominee for vice president, JD Vance, has even declared he doesn’t care what happens to Ukraine.
Many on the American right do not see Ukraine as a democracy, dedicated to safeguarding liberty at home and abroad, but instead see Ukraine as an authoritarian state in its own right. Before leaving Fox News, right-wing provocateur Tucker Carlson said Zelenskyy was not interested in “freedom or democracy.” Cato Institute fellow Ted Galen Carpenter has called Ukraine a “false democracy.” U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene has applauded Russia for “protecting Christianity” and described it approvingly in comparison with “secular Ukraine.”
Greene’s comments point to a larger point in the American anti-Ukraine view, built on a belief in Russia’s self-promotion as a protector of Christianity and traditional values. Russian President Vladmir Putin recently advanced the Kremlin’s narrative by simplifying the immigration process to attract foreigners who share Russia’s “traditional values.”
The result of these dueling self-descriptions of Slavic nations is that Russia and Ukraine have become proxies for each side of a divided America. Just as American progressives are perhaps too quick to attribute to Ukraine the pluralism and social progressivism they strive for in the U.S., American conservatives and traditionalists are quick to believe Russia — and in some cases specifically the Russian Orthodox Church — is a bastion of the same traditionalism they hope to defend in America. For them, it makes sense that Russia was forced to go to war with Ukraine to defend it against “pride parades.” They fear (however irrationally) they might be forced into the same war in America.
For these people, Ukrainian efforts to suppress the Moscow-linked UOC are seen as evidence for their belief not only that Ukraine is an anti-democratic, anti-Christian, anti-family state, but moreover that Americans who support Ukraine are these things as well. This is particularly true as Americans are notoriously bad at separating their own internal battles from those abroad. “Religious freedom” is a dog whistle among many American traditionalists. A Ukrainian attack on “religious freedom” will most certainly lose all nuance in their translation of it into the American political landscape.
The truth is that Ukraine finds itself in a nearly impossible situation with respect to the UOC. On paper, at least, the UOC is an independent and fully Ukrainian church. It is also the church of many ordinary Ukrainians, who for whatever reasons (including language, habit, canonical and traditional loyalties) remain part of the besieged jurisdiction. At the same time, nearly everyone knows that the UOC’s independence is shallow at best, perhaps merely window dressing, and that while the UOC has supported Ukrainian soldiers and refugees, at least some UOC clerics are involved in efforts to undermine the Ukrainian cause and promote Russian ideology.
Zelenskyy is about to test not only Ukraine’s carefully constructed global image but also its own path toward liberal democracy. Ukraine’s future remains even more unclear as a result.
(Katie Kelaidis is a research fellow at the Institute of Orthodox Christian Studies in Cambridge, England.)
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