Amsterdam & Partners LLP today condemns the brutal murder of Monk Varsanofy (Turyansky) at the Holy Dormition Sviatohirsk Lavra, warning that the attack cannot be separated from the campaign of persecution targeted against the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) fostered by the Zelensky administration and the State Service of Ukraine for Ethnopolitics and Freedom of Conscience (DESS).

On 23 August, a group of unidentified individuals entered the Sviatohirsk Lavra and attacked members of the monastery. Monk Varsanofy was killed, while Monk Hryhoriy and Andriy Kyriienko, a refugee living at the monastery, were wounded.

On the very same day, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy hosted Ukraine’s National Prayer Breakfast in Kyiv under his patronage, bringing together political leaders, clergy from the state-linked “Orthodox Church of Ukraine” (OCU) and international guests.

The contradiction could scarcely be more disturbing.

While the Ukrainian government publicly claims to celebrate religious freedom before an international audience, the UOC has been subjected to an escalating campaign of violence, state pressure and coercion. DESS, led by Viktor Yelensky, has played a leading role in that campaign.

Today, on the week after Ukraine’s Independence Day, when Ukrainians adhering to the UOC — a Church that had itself declared independence in 2022 after backing Ukraine amid the Russian invasion — should be celebrating, they are attacked instead.

When state institutions systematically portray a religious community as suspect and illegitimate, subject its clergy and institutions to sustained legal and administrative pressure, and fail to protect the Church adequately as hostility against it escalates — all as a means to prop up a rival Church — violent attacks do not occur in a political vacuum.

Robert Amsterdam, Founder and Managing Partner of Amsterdam & Partners, which serves as international counsel to UOC, states:

“Last weekend, Ukraine’s political leadership gathered for a Prayer Breakfast excluding the UOC, and on that same day, a monk of the UOC is murdered at one of the country’s great monasteries. The hypocrisy of the incumbent administration and its supporters is staggering. The murder of Monk Varsanofy is the horrifying consequence of an atmosphere they helped create.

Today should be a great national holiday. Ukraine’s independence has been defended at an extraordinary human cost, and Ukrainians have every right to celebrate their sovereignty and freedom. But it must not be hijacked by a government that invokes freedom before the world while itself undermining fundamental freedoms.

Prayer Breakfasts cannot provide cover for religious persecution. Those international political and religious leaders who participated in yesterday’s event must now ask themselves whether their presence is being used to legitimise precisely the conduct that the principles of religious freedom require them to oppose.”

Amsterdam & Partners calls for an immediate, independent and transparent investigation into the attack at Sviatohirsk Lavra and for those responsible for the killing of Monk Varsanofy to be identified and prosecuted. The firm further calls upon Ukraine’s international partners to scrutinise the wider campaign against the UOC and to demand that the Ukrainian government respect freedom of religion and the institutional independence of the Church.

Amsterdam & Partners LLP is an international law firm specialising in political advocacy and human rights, based in London and Washington, DC. For more information, please visit www.amsterdamandpartners.com. Media enquiries may be directed to contact@amsterdamandpartners.com.

Media gallery

About The Author
Business Wire