Eustratiy Zoria said the state does not intervene in the affairs of the OCU and does not exert any pressure on it.

The spokesman of the OCU Ivan (Eustratiy) Zoria believes that the state has begun to treat his structure better.

“We are satisified with the government’s current attitude regarding the foreign affairs of the Church,” he said in an interview with OrthodoxTimes. “As far as our internal affairs are concerned, no intervention or pressure from the authorities has been exerted on us.”

According to Zoria, before coming to power, the current government officials had certain views on Church-State relations and, like any opposition group, tried to show a different approach from the then government – the team of ex-President Petro Poroshenko, who, in fact, created the OCU, and in which the persecution of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church significantly increased.

“However, coming to power, they (Zelensky’s team – Ed.) realized in practice that religion, the operation of church-religious organizations is not a restricted issue that deals only with the grandmother lighting a candle in the church. It’s a huge set of issues,” the OCU spokesman noted.

As the UOJ wrote, after Vladimir Zelensky came to power, many had hopes that the persecution of the canonical Church would end. However, soon the authorities began to indulge the schismatics, the seizures of the UOC churches resumed, and the President invited Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople, who “legalized” the Ukrainian schism, to Ukraine.