The organizers aimed to establish the true number of believers in each of the confessions, rather than the number of people who nominally identify themselves with them.

As a result of a study carried out by the “Club of Experts” organization together with the sociological company Active Group, devoted to the religious affiliation of Ukrainian citizens, it was found out that 14.4% of the parishioners of the canonical UOC (the “core” of the Сhurch, represented by active members of religious communities) attend weekly services, which is twice as much as the number of active parishioners of the OCU (7.6%).

Political analyst Daniil Bogatyrev announced this on his Facebook page.

At the same time, among the adherents (non-parishioners) of the OCU, the number of those who answered “Probable not” to the question “Can you call yourself a believer” is more than 2 times higher (10.3%).

“These figures completely negate the insignificant advantage the OCU has when polling ‘among random people’ (inactive parishioners), since the overwhelming majority of sympathizers of this pseudo-confession simply do not go to church,” said Daniil Bogatyrev.

“The UOC is the Church of believers and faithful, the largest denomination in Ukraine. The OCU is a political sect, whose core is made up of ‘atheists of the Kyiv Patriarchate’,” the political expert concluded.

As the UOJ previously reported, the political analyst explained why the processions of the UOC and the OCU are so different.