Reshetnikov: Nishchuk created a public service for religions to promote OCU

Former Minister of Culture of Ukraine Y. Nishchuk. Photo: 24tv.ua

The authorities decided to create the State Service of Ukraine for Ethnic Policy and Freedom of Conscience as early as 2018, and in December, ex-Minister of Culture Yevgeny Nishchuk announced the need to create such a service to help establish the OCU, said on the air of "1Kozak" channel religious scholar, former chairman of the State Committee for Religions Yuri Reshetnikov.

“The idea of creating this service came up in December 2018. I think that it had actually arisen even earlier. In December 2018, it was publicly voiced by the then Minister of Culture Yevgeny Nishchuk. In fact, Yevgeny Nischuk said that this service was needed to create a local church in Ukraine,” Reshetnikov said.

According to him, Nishchuk’s initiative caused concern among representatives of many religious organizations in Ukraine.

 “It caused some concern among almost all other religious organizations because everyone perfectly understood that the creation of a state Church would sooner or later have negative consequences for all other participants in the religious field of Ukraine,” the religious scholar noted.

For this reason, the All-Ukrainian Council of Churches and Religious Organizations did not agree to the creation of such a service for six months, he recalled. Only in August 2019, the former Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine, headed by Vladimir Groysman, decided to create a State Service for Ethnic Policy and Freedom of Conscience.

“We inherited it from the previous government,” Reshetnikov commented on the emergence of the civil service.

We recall that in December 2018, Nishchuk announced the creation of the State Service for Ethnic Policy and Freedom of Conscience “in connection with the bestowal of the Tomos”.

At the same time, the All-Ukrainian Council of Churches and Religious Organizations called on to refrain from creating new state bodies in the field of freedom of conscience and expressed a desire to study the draft Regulation on the activities of the State Service for Ethnic Policy and Freedom of Conscience in order to understand the essence of its powers.

Тогда же члены ВСЦиРО призвали воздержаться от создания новых государственных органов в сфере свободы совести и выразили желание изучить проект Положения о деятельности Госслужбы по этнополитике и свободе совести, чтобы понять суть ее полномочий.

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