State Ethnic Policy Service offers OCU to help with "transition" documents

Head of the State Ethnopoly Policy Elena Bogdan and the head of the OCU. Photo: OCU website

The State Service of Ukraine for Ethnopolitics and Freedom of Conscience will perform an "independent analysis" of documents on the transfer of religious communities from the UOC to the OCU and "conduct a professional dialogue" with the local authorities, the State Service promised on its Facebook page.

According to the authority, they pay attention to the possibility of performing an independent analysis of the documents because of "information in the media about obstruction by the regional state administrations" while transferring communities from the UOC to the Dumenko-led structure. As an example of such regional state administrations, they referred only to the Kyiv RSA.

Although the officials did not name a specific media outlet, most likely such a response followed the last interview of the head of the OCU, where Dumenko expressed his indignation that not a single statute had been re-registered in the Kyiv region after the change of power. He said that the authorities did not explain this in any way, but "find some kind of legal points."

The State Service did not mention problems with registration or re-registration of communities of other religious organizations.

“If a religious community believes that a RSA incorrectly worked with its registration documents, it can provide copies of these documents to the State Service of Ukraine for Ethnic Policy along with a copy of the RSA's replies (in case the RSA provided official responses to a religious community),” the State Service noted. “In this case, it will be able to analyze the compliance of the submitted documents with the current legislation and initiate a professional dialogue with the Regional State Administration. Thanks to a comprehensive analysis with respect for the current legislation, it will be possible to take constructive steps in order to protect the free expression of the will of believers."

As reported by the UOJ, the head of the OCU Epiphany Dumenko recently announced a "large-scale wave of transitions" to the OCU.

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