On March 23, 2023, the Ombudsman’s Secretariat hosted a meeting between the Commissioner of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine for Human Rights, Mr. Dmytro Lubinets, with the Resident Coordinator of the UN System in Ukraine, Denise Brown, and the Chairperson of the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine, Matilda Bogner. According to the official website of the department, during the meeting, Mr. Dmytro Lubinets, among other things, said that “the UOC of the Moscow Patriarchate belongs to the Russian Federation, supports the war, the occupation of Ukrainian lands.”

The DECR UOC published an official Statement in which it emphasized that such statements by the Ombudsman regarding the Ukrainian Orthodox Church are “false, discriminatory and do not correspond to reality.”

“The Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which the Ombudsman deliberately and manipulatively calls Moscow, does not belong to Russia. The control center of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church is located in the city of Kyiv and is registered in accordance with Ukrainian law, and the founder is the Cathedral of the UOC. All governing bodies of the UOC are located in the city of Kyiv and carry out their activities under the leadership of the Primate of the UOC,” the statement says.

It is also noted that “if Mr. Dmytro Lubinets was referring to individual cases of possible illegal actions of representatives of the UOC, covered by the media, as support for the “war and occupation of Ukrainian lands”, then such actions require a proper investigation. At the same time, we draw your attention to the fact that the number of criminal proceedings for similar illegal actions against civil servants, law enforcement officers is much greater than against representatives of the UOC.”

At the same time, the DECR emphasized that individual cases that happen among representatives of the UOC are a private opinion and in any case are not the official position of the Church.

“In this regard, we call on Mr. Dmytro Lubinets to refute his false statements about the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, and also to inform the UN representatives – the UN system coordinator in Ukraine Denise Brown and the head of the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine Matilda Bogner, in within the framework of the meeting with whom he provided them with false information as a representative of the current government,” the statement emphasized.