Aleksey Arestovich, adviser to the head of the President’s Office, said that initiatives to ban the UOC, which is supported by millions of Ukrainians, can only be beneficial to Russian intelligence. He wrote about this in the comments to his post on Facebook.

“The ban on the Church as such, to which millions of Ukrainians identify themselves, without help in liberation from influence… without a program to support the transition… I sometimes get the impression that Russian intelligence is ordering such lawmaking,” Arestovich said.

He also believes that “very serious processes of emancipation from Moscow” are underway in the UOC, which, on the contrary, the state needs to support, and not engage in prohibitions.

“Support for these processes and personalities is not visible, but dragging and not letting go … There is so much talk about decolonization, and the character and methods of the state are still in the best traditions of the Moscow autocracy,” Alexey Arestovich added.