The Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate (UOC-MP) denies that Metropolitan Onufriy and other bishops of the church have Russian passports, the Synodal Information and Education Department of the UOC-MP has said.
"In connection with the appearance of inaccurate and manipulative information about the bishops of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church on the Ukrayinska Pravda Internet portal, it should be said that some of the bishops mentioned in the video were deprived of citizenship without any justification, and therefore they filed a lawsuit with the court demanding the restoration of their Ukrainian citizenship, since they have no other. The court opened proceedings at their request," the church said.
It is noted that since the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) has repeatedly stated that it checked all the bishops of the UOC for dual citizenship and did not revoke the Ukrainian citizenship of the other bishops mentioned in the story, the information provided in the video cannot be true. It is also alleged that the author of the video presented as evidence footage with openly dubious and unconfirmed content.
"His Beatitude Metropolitan Onufriy is a citizen of Ukraine by birth and does not hold passports of other states," the UOC-MP said.
At the same time, the Church says that it is surprised by the fact that Ukrainian journalists are persistently looking for "non-existent Russian passports" of the bishops of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and, according to the UOC-MP, ignore the outspoken statements of OCU representatives about some of its bishops having Russian and LPR passports.
Later, Onufriy said that he did not consider himself a citizen of Russia, but admitted that he had previously had a Russian passport, which he allegedly gave up.
Yesterday, Ukrainian journalists published an investigation revealing that Metropolitan Onufriy and more than 20 other clergymen of the UOC-MP have Russian citizenship. For example, Onufriy received his passport in Moscow on 20 March 2002. A year later, he received a second passport for foreign travel as a Russian citizen.
All of these Russian citizens (with the exception of Metropolitan Onufriy) were deprived of their Ukrainian citizenship by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in January this year.
In February, the Migration Service revoked the citizenship of Bishop Gedeon and four other representatives of the UOC-MP.