[4] By law the objective of religious policy is to “restore full-fledged dialogue between representatives of various social, ethnic, cultural, and religious groups to foster the creation of a tolerant society and provide for freedom of conscience and worship.”[3] Government agencies authorized to monitor religious organizations include the Prosecutor General, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and all other “central bodies of the executive government.”[3] Ukraine signed the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights on 20 March 1968 and ratified it on 12 November 1973 (as part of the USSR), which includes the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion in Article 18.
[3] The Office of the Parliamentary Human Rights Ombudsman is constitutionally required to release an annual report to parliament with a section on religious freedom.
[3] According to the Ukrainian Institute for Religious Freedom (IRF), at least 630 sacred sites were damaged or destroyed by Russian attacks and assaults between 24 February 2022 and 1 December 2023 alone.
[7] The Institute for Religious Freedom states that its figures only include documented cases and that the actual extent of the destruction will presumably only be determined after the end of hostilities and is expected to be significantly larger.
[7] The annexation of Crimea by Russia in March 2014 in violation of international law and the subsequent occupation regime led to massive restrictions on freedom of religion and belief in Crimea: All religious communities registered under Ukrainian law had to re-register, this time following the regulations of the Russian occupation regime.
As a result of this review, the religious entities were obliged to remove all references to relations with Ukrainian bodies (e.g. dioceses and administrations) from their statutes.
[12] Prominent representatives of the Crimean Tatars were banned from entering the country following the occupation of Crimea in violation of international law.
[13] The Russian government has detained and imprisoned several Crimean Tatars under the accusation of being affiliated with the Islamic fundamentalist group Hizb ut-Tahrir.
[15] The secret police of the LPR State Security Ministry have also banned all congregations of the Ukrainian Baptist Union without a legal basis.
For instance, a Catholic priest who had lived in Luhansk since 1993 was banned from returning there, which has also had a massive impact on local pastoral care.
[16] Following the Russian example, the self-declared People's Republics of Lugansk (LPR) and Donetsk (DPR) have banned Jehovah's Witnesses and other ‘non-traditional’ faiths.
[3] The LPR and DPR regimes have detained and imprisoned members of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, and have confiscated several buildings belonging to the group.
Ukrainian security forces have also accused the Donetsk People's Republic of having paid agitators to vandalize UOC-MP properties with swastikas.
[6] As a result of the occupation of territories in violation of international law since the further escalation of the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine on 24 February 2022 and the annexations of 2022 by Russia, restrictions and violations of religious freedom by the Russian occupying power, as observed in Crimea, also extended to the territories occupied in the course of this further aggression.
[22] For example, clerics and employees of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate) were investigated in over 70 cases because they were accused of collaboration, treason against the state or hate speech on religious grounds.
[22] On 20 August 2024, the Ukrainian parliament passed the ‘Law on the Protection of National and Public Security, Human Rights and Freedoms in the Field of Activities of Religious Organisations’.
[29][30] In 2018, the Association of Jewish Organisations and Communities of Ukraine (VAAD) documented a total of 12 cases of vandalism with an anti-Semitic background.
Interference from the political side in internal church issues is considered by them to be counterproductive, carrying the risk of reinforcing existing stigmatisation.
[40][41][42] Instead of collectively taking action against an individual church, according to them it would be more appropriate to punish concrete cases of misconduct in which espionage and treason can be proven.
Other Christian groups include Pentecostals, Seventh-day Adventists, Lutherans, Anglicans, Calvinists, Methodists, Presbyterians, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
During this time period, Jews and Muslims were also present in the Kievan Rus', although these groups were generally seen as being distinct from ethnic Ukrainians or Rusyns.
[45][46] As the Kievan Rus' disintegrated in the 12th and 13th centuries, the territories corresponding to modern-day Ukraine were subject to various political religious poles of attraction: Russia in the east, Lithuania in the north, and Poland in the west.
[54] During World War II, Jews were massacred by Nazi and Ukrainian nationalist factions, while the Soviet government deported Muslim Crimean Tatars, primarily to Uzbekistan.
Pentecostals, Seventh Day Adventists, Jehovah's Witnesses, and other tiny Protestant sects that were openly opposed to the state were banned outright.
[62] The property and territory abandoned by Crimean Tatars was appropriated by ethnic Russians who were resettled by the Soviet authorities, leading to large demographic changes in Crimea.
[66] [67] As part of implementing a 2015 decommunization and denazification law, several streets, buildings, and monuments have been renamed after 20th century Ukrainian nationalists, some of whom are associated with antisemitism.
[3] The party Svoboda annually held marches to commemorate Stepan Bandera's birthday, with thousands attending and some chanting antisemitic slogans.
According to a government spokesperson, the same three individuals also threw Molotov cocktails at a synagogue in Lviv (causing minor damage), and engaged in other attempted vandalism against Jewish buildings.
[3] In 2019, the independent National Minority Rights Monitoring Group reported no instances of violence against Jews and 14 cases of anti-Semitic vandalism.
[6][3] Members of the UOC-MP have disrupted religious ceremonies held by Protestant groups in public spaces, accusing them of "desecrating" the area.