OSCE expert: Stripping the UOC Primate of citizenship will harm Ukraine

Natallia Vasylevych. Photo: Vasylevych’s Telegram channel

Religious scholar and OSCE expert on freedom of religion Natallia Vasylevych commented on Zelensky’s decree stripping Metropolitan Onuphry of his citizenship in her Telegram channel.

According to her, it is “cheap political populism that will cost all of Ukraine dearly.”

“Out of all the potentially ‘unlawful activity’ they found a fairly neutral fact from 2002 – obtaining Russian citizenship,” the scholar wrote.

According to her, the SBU’s wording that Metropolitan Onuphry “maintains ties with the Moscow Patriarchate and deliberately opposed gaining canonical independence for the Ukrainian Church from the Moscow Patriarchate” can be interpreted as Ukrainian law enforcement’s belief “that ‘canonical independence of the Ukrainian Church’ should be received not from Constantinople, but from the Moscow Patriarchate.”

She also believes the SBU’s claims that the Metropolitan maintained ties with the Moscow Patriarchate from the start of Russia’s invasion are untrue.

“They could at least have published transcripts of negotiations or screenshots of text messages. But apparently, they found nothing,” Vasylevych wrote.

Earlier, the UOJ reported that, according to Zelensky, revoking Metropolitan Onuphry’s citizenship is “our entirely justified work concerning various individuals who have aligned themselves with Russia.” Zelensky did not bother to explain exactly how the Primate of the UOC had “aligned himself to Russia.”

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