Only 685 churches have switched to the OCU since the start of the full-scale war

At the beginning of the full-scale war, there were 8,782 churches affiliated with the Moscow Patriarchate in Ukraine. Only 685 of them have transitioned to the Orthodox Church of Ukraine.

You can verify the religious organization on the Church Register page.

The peak of transitions occurred in 2023 when 386 communities joined the OCU. However, from December of the previous year to April 2024, their number increased by only 96 churches.

The majority of institutions changed their religious affiliation in the Kyiv region — 164, as well as in the Khmelnytskyi and Vinnytsia regions — 155 and 75 respectively.

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Instead, there are still 8,097 churches in Ukraine associated with the aggressor country. The largest number of such religious institutions is in Donetsk — 683 communities. Next are the Dnipropetrovsk and Vinnytsia regions — with 526 churches each.

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Despite such a large number of active pro-Russian churches, only 22 of them explicitly indicate their affiliation with the Moscow Patriarchate in their names.

Additionally, for 42 churches, the Ministry of Justice independently supplemented their names with phrases like “RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATION DOES NOT INDICATE AFFILIATION WITH THE MOSCOW PATRIARCHATE” — all of them are in the Chernivtsi region. By the way, 7 communities independently changed their names from forced ones to their previous ones. And three churches, after such renaming, joined the Orthodox Church of Ukraine.

In anticipation of the full-scale war of Russia in Ukraine, changes to the law “On Freedom of Conscience and Religious Organizations” came into force. According to the new rules, churches and religious institutions were required to change their names in the Unified State Register to indicate clearly that the organization belongs to the Moscow Patriarchate. Otherwise, such changes were made compulsorily, and the organization received a note in the State Register next to its official name stating: “RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATION DID NOT INDICATE AFFILIATION WITH THE RUSSIAN ORTHODOX CHURCH (MOSCOW PATRIARCHATE)”.

It is worth noting that on October 19, 2023, the Verkhovna Rada, in the first reading, supported draft law 8371 on the prohibition of activities of religious organizations associated with the aggressor state. Currently, it is being prepared for the second reading.