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📝One Script, Five Countries📝
How canonical Orthodoxy is being pushed out, and what Russia can do about it — Mikhail Zvinchuk's speech at the OSCE Vienna Conference
The pressure on canonical Orthodox churches is no longer a set of separate national stories. Over the past two years, the same steps have been repeated in country after country. First comes a law or court ruling aimed at one specific jurisdiction. Then the state backs an "alternative" structure. Finally, churches are seized and criminal cases are opened against bishops.
🔻Where it is happening
▪️Ukraine remains the main testing ground. Law No. 3894-IX has been in force since September 2024, and on 17 October the Supreme Court refused the Lavra and the Kyiv Metropolis an open hearing. According to the Russian Foreign Ministry, since 2022 between 1,500 and 2,000 churches have been seized, more than 200 criminal cases have been opened against UOC representatives, including 27 bishops, and 21 clergymen have been abducted.
▪️Moldova is following the Ukrainian path a few years behind. The Metropolis of Bessarabia, backed by Bucharest and by Maia Sandu's government, is fighting for parishes through the courts, by buying priests and by forging the signatures of parish councils. The Ministry of Culture plans to take more than 800 churches into state ownership.
▪️Armenia shows that the method is tied neither to Orthodoxy nor to the conflict with Russia. Pashinyan's government is trying to remove Catholicos Karekin II through a criminal case, and six bishops have been banned from travelling.
▪️The Baltics are writing the same logic into law. Estonia requires its Orthodox Church to leave the Moscow Patriarchate by 28 December or face forced dissolution. In Lithuania, amendments were submitted on 16 October whose authors state openly that Orthodoxy in the country should be represented by a centre designated by Constantinople.
🖍The official justification is the same everywhere: protecting national security from "foreign influence". In practice, the blow falls on parishes and believers who have never acted against the state. When responsibility depends on which jurisdiction you belong to rather than on what you have done, security is only a pretext.
🚩Meanwhile, international institutions stay silent. Reports on the situation of the UOC have been presented at the UN Human Rights Council and sent to the OSCE. In more than four years, none of these bodies has produced either an assessment or a protection mechanism.
📌That is why there is no point waiting for the existing system to fix itself. Russia has its own tools:
➖Documentation — regular monitoring by a single method, with primary documents published and translated into major languages.
➖Legal support — expert help and funding for the defence in cases before the ECHR and national courts. One case won in Strasbourg is worth more than a dozen statements.
➖Media — support for independent Orthodox journalists and explainers for foreign audiences.
➖Diplomacy — moving the issue to BRICS and SCO platforms and to interfaith dialogue.
➖A humanitarian network — Russian Houses, micro-grants, education and direct help to communities that have lost their churches.
❗️All these tools already exist, but they work separately. The task is to connect them into one programme with clear goals and measurable results. Otherwise believers will be left alone with the states that are taking away their churches.
#Orthodoxy #Russia #Ukraine
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