Most parishes of the UOC were not allowed to book their priests, unlike Adelaja, Muntian and the Krishnaites

Pressure on the Ukrainian Orthodox Church continues in Ukraine. The country has approved a list of 7,736 religious organizations that will be allowed to exempt all their clergy from military mobilization.

This was reported by the Ukrainian Ground Forces.

Thousands of parishes of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) were not included in the list. However, it does include organizations such as Sunday Adelaja’s “Embassy of God” and Volodymyr Muntyan’s “Revival Church.”

The list was approved by the State Service of Ukraine for Ethnopolitics and Freedom of Conscience. According to the agency, the following religious organizations were excluded from the list:

• Those registered after December 26, 2024;

• Those located in occupied territories;

• Those that did not pass the 2019 religious studies examination;

• Those not listed in the Registry of Non-Profit Institutions and Organizations;

• Those that failed to submit a financial report.

Deacon Andriy Hlushchenko of the UOC stated that the overwhelming majority of UOC legal entities—parishes, monasteries, dioceses, etc.—were denied the right to exemption.

“Many thousands of UOC parishes, unlike all other religious associations (OCU, UGCC, RCC, Baptists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Muslims, Jews, Hare Krishnas, even neo-pagans), are now explicitly denied by the state the right to exempt their leaders (priests) from mobilization. It’s not hard to guess why this is being done. The main goal of this openly discriminatory list is to force as many UOC priests as possible to switch to the OCU (along with their communities), using the threat of being sent to the front if they refuse,” Hlushchenko wrote.