Ukraine’s Parliament has created the legal tools for a governmental ban on any religious group that it deems to be too closely tied to Russia by voting for a bill that explicitly bans the Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine.

However, the ban also directly affects the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC), which the Ukrainian government says is too closely tied to Moscow because of its historic ties to the Russian Orthodox Church.

After more than a year and a half of legal wrangling over the language of the bill, Ukrainian lawmakers are set to ban the sole canonical body of Orthodox Christians in the Ukraine.

Today, the Ukrainian Rada adopted bill 8371 to ban the Ukrainian Orthodox Church
– Large parts of its population speak Russian and are Orthodox Christians. The American-backed de-russification / purge of Ukraine that began with the coup in 2014 intensifieshttps://t.co/KZTHkKeWjQ

— Glenn Diesen (@Glenn_Diesen) August 20, 2024

Three months after the February 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, the UOC publicly proclaimed its loyalty to Ukraine and its independence from the Russian Orthodox Church.

Ukrainian officials remain skeptical of the UOC because of its centuries-long affiliation with the Russian Orthodox Church.

The new law explicitly bans religious organizations with ties to any organization located in a state that is carrying out armed aggression against Ukraine.

While the impending ban may soothe some of the Ukrainian leadership’s fears about a competing moral authority to their own, it raises some serious concerns about the religious freedom of an entire religious body caught in the middle of a long term political conflict.

U.S. Senator J.D. Vance (R-OH) spoke to this issue in April of this year and warned his Senate colleagues that such a law could lead to the displacement of a massive Christian community in Ukraine and that the U.S. would share in the blame for allowing it to happen.

On April 23, Trump’s VP candidate @JDVance1 spoke about the threat of Ukraine’s Draft Law 8371, which aims to unlawfully ban the entire Ukrainian Orthodox Church on false pretenses. We hope that awareness of these critical issues continues to grow to protect the UOC. pic.twitter.com/X2Osxyn3iV

— Robert Amsterdam (@robertamsterdam) July 15, 2024

In the past two and a half years since Russia invaded, more than 100 UOC clerics have faced criminal proceedings and more than 50 of them have been charged with 26 receiving sentences from the court.

Americans who have been proud to have hundreds of billions of their tax dollars sent to Ukraine, might want to reconsider whether this is the kind of “democratic progress”  they wish to support.