Andriy Fert is a nonresidential fellow at Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen (IWM) and a PhD candidate at Kyiv-Mohyla Academy.

This post looks at the challenges that the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC), affiliated with the Moscow Patriarchate, faced during the first year of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. I do this through the perspective of an ordinary parish priest. To protect his anonymity, I call him “Father Antonii,” which is not his real name. This text is based entirely on my two Zoom conversations with Father Antonii in late January 2023.

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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). An earlier version of this piece was posted on Forum18.

The Russia-Ukraine war, starting with the annexation of Crimea and the military conflict in eastern Ukraine and continuing with Russia’s full-scale invasion, has had a tremendous effect on freedom of religion or belief (FoRB) and other related human rights in the region. Murders, tortures, forced detention, and FoRB violations—including forced displacement of priests and believers, acts of religious discrimination and social hatred to religious minorities inspired and directed by Russian proxies, as well as expropriations of religious properties—have become the reality of the territories occupied by Russia in 2014 and 2022.

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