Kiev, March 27, 2026
Photo: pravlife.info
Ukrainian state bodies continue to persecute and terrorize the Ukrainian people of the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church, with a particular focus on the Church’s monasteries.
On Wednesday, March 25, the State Service for Ethnopolitics and Freedom of Conscience issued a formal order to the Holy Protection Goloseevsky Hermitage in Kiev, demanding that it sever its ties with the Kiev Metropolia of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) and provide written proof of a break with the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC).
The State Service conducted an investigation into the monastery’s affiliations between January 26 and March 19. Following the review, its head Viktor Yelensky signed an order requiring the monastery to fulfill a set of demands by April 27.
The order charges the monastery with affiliation with a foreign religious organization whose activity is banned in Ukraine under the Law on Protection of Constitutional Order in the Sphere of Religious Organizations. Investigators said they found evidence in the monastery’s charter and internal documents of its structural links to an organization that is part of the prohibited center of influence.
Under the order, the monastery's abbot is required to provide a resolution from the Spiritual Council—the monastery’s governing body—on the monastery’s withdrawal from the Kiev Metropolia of the UOC. The demand follows a determination made by the State Service in August 2025 that the Metropolia itself remains affiliated with the ROC, meaning that any religious organization within the Metropolia’s structure is subject to the same designation.
Notably, that determination was not based on the UOC’s own governing documents or those of the Metropolia, which explicitly articulate the Church’s independence. Instead, the State Service grounded its findings in what Russian Church documents claim about the UOC—effectively granting Russian ecclesiastical documents higher legal authority in Ukraine than Ukrainian ecclesiastical documents.
The Goloseevsky abbot is also required to formally declare his disagreement with being appointed to governing bodies of the ROC and to prepare a statement terminating those powers and severing ties with the Moscow Patriarchate. However, Ukrainian authorities are already aware, but deny, that the UOC separated itself from the ROC in May 2022, and since then, no UOC member has served on any ROC committee
The State Service warns that failure to comply by the deadline may result in further sanctions against the monastery.
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