Ukraine’s Church-State Relationship May Be Changed Significantly: Interview with Dmytro Vovk

This interview was initially published by the Forum for Ukrainian Studies, an analytical online platform of the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies. Dmytro Vovk was interviewed by Heather Coleman (University of Alberta).

Heather Coleman: Even before the 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine by the Russian Federation, you argued that the war with Russia since 2014 had changed church-state relations in Ukraine. Can you describe that evolution?

Dmytro Vovk: There are two main trends here, which overlap. The first trend is securitization, and the second one is a drift to a more cooperationist model of church-state relations with respect to securitization. Since 2014, religion, and especially inter-Orthodox competition, has become a matter of security concern for Ukraine. Before the war, there were several academics, experts, and some politicians promoting this sort of “spiritual security” approach, but it was never a matter of urgent high political priority or comprehensive state policies.

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Law, Religion, and Decolonization

This series aims to explore the roles of colonialism and decolonization in the interaction of law and religion.

Religion and religious institutions can be employed by the state to support its imperial expansion and facilitate the loyalty and cultural homogenization of colonized territories and populations. Historically, these processes are often combined with proselytizing the imperial religion. They can, however, also preserve some religious freedom or autonomy for the domestic population, as Stanislav Panin discusses regarding Russia’s colonization of Siberia and the role of the Russian Orthodox Church in that colonization.

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Spiritual Decolonization, National Security, and Religious Freedom: Squaring a Triangle in the Case of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church

Andriy Fert is a UNET non-resident fellow at Zentrum für Osteuropa- und internationale Studien in Berlin.

Dmytro Vovk is a visiting associate professor at Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law.

In June 2023, the fashionable Ukrainian multimedia cultural project Ukraїner published an article on decolonization. Decolonization, as the author describes it, is “a process of cleansing the public space from the markers of (Russian) occupation,” including monuments, mosaics, names of streets, and public premises associated with the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union and contemporary Russia.

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