A further hearing in the claim brought by the State Service of Ukraine for Ethnopolitics and Freedom of Conscience for the termination of the Kyiv Metropolia of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church was held in the Sixth Administrative Court of Appeal in Kyiv on 10 September 2026. The case has been before that court for a year and no decision has yet been given, hromadske’s correspondents report.
Some 11,000 faithful of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church have filed applications to take part in the proceedings as third parties, the same report says. At the hearing the court read part of those applications, with breaks for air-raid alerts, until the working day ended; it has to rule on every applicant, even if all of them are dealt with in a single ruling. On the morning of the same day, hromadske reports, both supporters of the Church and its opponents gathered outside the court building.
The State Service of Ukraine for Ethnopolitics and Freedom of Conscience told hromadske that in its view this amounts to a delaying of the case by the Metropolia. The next hearing is listed for 7 October 2026, when the applications will continue to be read.
The claim for the termination of the Metropolia’s activity was filed by the State Service in September 2025, hromadske recalls. Before that, in August 2024, the Verkhovna Rada passed a law providing for a ban on the activity in Ukraine of religious organisations linked with Russia; the President signed it on Independence Day.
Sources: hromadske, 10 September 2026.
