Kiev, May 20, 2026
Photo: rbc.ru
The canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church won another legal victory yesterday, May 19, in a case concerning the state’s unflagging attempts to destroy the Church. The Cassation Administrative Court in Ukraine fully granted an appeal filed by the Kiev Metropolia of the UOC concerning how various aspects of the case will be heard.
The ruling was announced by UOC lawyer Archpriest Nikita Chekman following the court session, reports the Union of Orthodox Journalists.
The case stems from September 2025, when the State Service for Ethnopolitics and Freedom of Conscience filed a lawsuit seeking to dissolve the Kiev Metropolia of the UOC. In response, the Metropolia filed a counter-lawsuit with several demands, including recognition that actions taken by State Service head Viktor Yelensky were illegal and cancelation of an order approving a religious studies expert analysis of the UOC’s Charter.
A lower court had separated the various claims in the counter-lawsuit into different proceedings, which would have forced the Church to fight each issue in separate cases. The May 19 ruling overturned that decision, allowing the Metropolia to keep its legal strategy intact by pursuing all its arguments together in one unified case rather than having them fragmented across multiple court proceedings.
This follows an earlier ruling on April 6, when the Sixth Administrative Court of Appeal ruled that Yelensky’s actions were illegal and canceled the order approving the 2023 analysis of the UOC Charter that concluded that the UOC remains part of the Russian Church. The UOC’s Legal Department emphasized that the court had found the expert analysis itself to be “defective” and lacking legal force.
The legal proceedings are part of ongoing disputes over the status and operations of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.
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