The lawyer of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, Robert Amsterdam, said that he had compiled a report of more than 250 pages with evidence of attacks on the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, its churches and its priests.
He said this in his video message.
He again called on the authorities of Ukraine to refrain from further consideration of draft law 8371 aimed at banning the UOC.
"This bill is nothing more than a manifestation of hate speech. Attacks on believers during war, expelling them from churches, denying citizens access to places where they can pray are absolutely unacceptable. I call on the government to stop consideration of this bill and stop dividing the population, inciting brother against brother," said Amsterdam.
The lawyer stated that the UOC is not connected with the Moscow Patriarchate.
"The Ukrainian Orthodox Church does not support and distances itself from the ideology of the Russian world." Moreover, the position of the church regarding the ideas of the "Russian world" has long been publicly expressed by His Beatitude Metropolitan Onufry of Kyiv: "We are not building any "Russian world". We are building God's peace. At the same time, like every local church that operates within the borders of its state, the UOC fully associates itself with the state of Ukraine, whose protection the Church called for from the first day of the full-scale Russian invasion," he quoted the statement of the UOC.
Also today, Robert Amsterdam called for the support of Ukraine from the US.
"From myself personally: supporting Ukraine is critically important for America, not only for Ukraine. How can you abandon people by letting them down at every turn? Who will believe the United States after Kabul and now Kyiv?" Amsterdam wrote on the social network Kh.
