Zelenskyy Announces that He Is Banning the Ukrainian Orthodox Church

TRANSCRIPT:

ZELENSKYY (speaking Ukrainian): "A meeting of the NSDC (National Defense Security Council) was held today; a meeting at which we examined numerous facts of the ties of certain religious circles in Ukraine with the aggressor state. It is necessary to create such conditions in which any figures dependent on the aggressor country will not be able to manipulate the Ukrainians and weaken Ukraine from within. The NSDC instructed the government to submit to the Verkhovna Rada, a bill on the impossibility of the activities of religious organizations affiliated with the centers of influence in the Russian Federation in Ukraine. In addition, the State Service for Ethnopolitics and Freedom of Conscience has been instructed to ensure the religious studies examination of the Statute on the Management of the UOC for the presence of a church-canonical connection with the Moscow Patriarchate and, if necessary, apply the measures provided for by law."