Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine and Religious Freedom: Dmytro Vovk’s Testimony before the USCIRF

Dmytro Vovk is a visiting associate professor at Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law and Director of the Centre for the Rule of Law and Religion Studies, Yaroslav Mudryi National Law University (Ukraine).

 I’d like to start by saying that contemporary Ukraine and Russia are antipodes in many respects, including with respect to religious freedom. While Ukraine has one of the most liberal religious legal frameworks in the region and a highly competitive religious market, Russia has managed to create a very restrictive religious legislation with one religion, the Russian Orthodox Church, being strongly endorsed and many religious minorities being severely discriminated against and oppressed. This stark contrast between Russia and Ukraine goes far beyond religion, and it is not an exaggeration to say that the Russia-Ukraine war is the war between two opposite political systems, where Ukraine’s is based on freedom and competition, while Russia’s is based on lack of freedom and on oppression.

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The Great Inventor: In Memoriam Metropolitan John Zizioulas of Pergamon

Andrey Shishkov is a research fellow at the School of Theology and Religious Studies of the University of Tartu (Estonia) and a member of the “Orthodoxy as Solidarity” research projects supported by the Estonian Research Council. 

On 2 February 2023, John Zizioulas, Orthodox hierarch of the Ecumenical Patriarchate and one of the most influential theologians of the past 50 years, passed away at age 92. He is known worldwide for his theology of communion, described in his two major works: Being as Communion (1985) and Communion and Otherness (2006). These books offer an attempt at a systematic theology that brings together various theological disciplines (such as triadology, Christology, ecclesiology, anthropology, pneumatology, and eschatology) based on the idea that being is communion. His opponents regarded him as a heretic and a modernist, while his supporters considered him one of the greatest minds of the Orthodox Church in history.

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The Russia-Ukraine War and Religion: One Year after the Beginning of the Invasion

In March 2022, after Russia’s full-scale attack on Ukraine had begun, we published a series exploring the role of religion in the war. In that series, we argued that the religious component of the conflict has manifested itself in a variety of aspects: from religious justification and rhetoric employed by Russian President Vladimir Putin, to the perception of the war by Russian and Ukrainian Orthodox churches, to threats to religious freedom in territories under Russian control.

Commemorating the first-year anniversary of Russia’s invasion, we provide an update on these topics.

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