Statement of the Federation Council of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation
April 12, 2023
The Federation Council of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation strongly condemns the flagrant violations of religious rights in Ukraine, which are directly caused by the policy of religious intolerance implemented by the Kiev regime.
The Ukrainian authorities are practically trying to impose a near-political structure established with Western support that calls itself the Orthodox Church of Ukraine on the Ukrainian people as an official church. At the same time, the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church is facing persecution: its temples are being closed, communities illegally liquidated, the clergy stripped of their citizenship and subjected to repressions. Recently, the Ukrainian authorities have made an outrageous decision to seize from the Ukrainian Orthodox Church one of its main holy sites – the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra.
The desecration of the Quran, holy book for all Muslims around the world, constituted another outrageous act. This act of vandalism is a direct consequence of the official Kiev’s policy discriminating against members of ethnic and religious communities residing in Ukraine.
This policy pursued by the Ukrainian authorities gravely violates the right of every person to freedom of thought, conscience and religion, guaranteed by the fundamental international instruments of the United Nations: the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms of Intolerance and of Discrimination Based on Religion or Belief.
These events arouse anger and resentment among all citizens of the Russian Federation.
The Federation Council of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation calls on the parliaments of foreign States and international parliamentary organizations to take a principled stand and urge official Kiev to return Ukraine to compliance with its international obligations, cease its policy of discrimination against believers and the desecration of religious shrines.
The Federation Council
of the Federal Assembly
of the Russian Federation
Read also:
Synod of Russian Orthodox Church on the situation of Ukrainian Orthodox Church-26/02/2019
