Religious expert Kateryna Shchetkina said that today there are still two goals before the “church legislation”. She wrote about it in an article for ZN.UA.

“The first is foreign policy: to reduce (preferably to zero) the possibility of Russian influence in Ukraine through church channels”, – the expert writes.

The second problem Shchetkina called the internal Ukrainian policy related to the redistribution of church property. According to the author, a situation has developed in which “the seizure and distribution of churches has been pushed into some gray zone where laws, neither God’s nor earthly, do not apply.

The observer argues that the UOC at one time “received many privileges and privileged property for use and ownership. Perhaps these decisions should be reconsidered. But the situation has been abandoned, and “historical justice” is most often restored by hand-to-hand violence, illegal actions of local authorities, under the squeal of “bolt cutters” and the crunch of broken glass”, – the author writes.

According to Shchetkina, lawmakers actually had (and still have) two ways. Either to take drastic measures and actually ban the UOC from operating on the territory of Ukraine (at least for the duration of a full-scale war). Or not to raise the “church issue” at all at the legislative level and rely on the political evolution of society – on the fact that “the problem of the Mospatriarchate in Ukraine will someday die out by itself”.

“This is, of course, almost sarcasm. No politician can bypass such a hype topic as the divided Ukrainian Orthodoxy. So far, the current “legislative initiative” has one visible and easily predictable result – a new wave of hype”, – the author summarized.

The Verkhovna Rada adopted as a basis the draft law No. 8371 “On Amending Certain Laws of Ukraine Regarding the Activities of Religious Organizations in Ukraine”, which was thought to ban the activities of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. However, according to Shchetkina, the wording of the document, which was adopted as a basis, does not really affect “the activities of the Moscow Patriarchate in Ukraine”.