Uspensky Cave Monastery, in Crimea, near Bakhchysarai, Ukraine, by Ward Lemke, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 license, courtesy of Wikimedia.

Reuters reports that the Ukrainian government has taken the first major step to ban the Ukrainian Orthodox Church as working the will of Moscow:

The Ukrainian parliament gave initial approval on Thursday to a law that would ban the Moscow-linked Ukrainian Orthodox Church after Kyiv accused it of collaborating with Russia following last year’s invasion.

The UOC – which is distinct from the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU) – says it no longer aligned with the Russian Orthodox Church and denies the charges levelled at it by Kyiv and said the draft law would be unconstitutional.

Yaroslav Zheleznyak, a member of parliament, said on the Telegram messaging app that deputies had voted to support the bill in its first reading. It has to be backed in a second reading and approved by the president to go in to force.

The law would ban the activities of religious organisations affiliated with centres of influence “in a state that carries out armed aggression against Ukraine”, and such activities could be terminated by a court of law.

Glory to Ukraine!