Since February 2022, the Ukrainian authorities have re-registered the transfer of 968 communities from the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) to the schismatic Orthodox Church of Ukraine (PCU). This is reported by the Union of Orthodox Journalists, citing sources in the State Service of Ukraine on issues of Ethnopolitics and freedom of Conscience.
At the same time, it is noted that in 2023, the regional state administrations re-registered the charters of 472 communities of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.
In December 2021, according to the report of the UOC affairs manager, there were 12,381 parishes in the canonical church.
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In recent years, the Ukrainian authorities have been actively pursuing a course to oust the UOC, including taking all measures to re-register its religious communities under the jurisdiction of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, created in 2018 from two schismatic religious structures. The local authorities deprive the UOC of the right to lease land for temples, organize illegal voting by "pseudo-parishioners", supporters of the schismatic PCU forcibly seize temples of the canonical church, attack priests. One of the last such incidents occurred on January 9 in the city of Ladyzhyn, Vinnytsia region, where supporters of the OCU with the help of bulldozers seized the temple of the canonical church, the rector of the temple was beaten, and the parishioners were kicked out in the cold.
According to the latest data, 65 criminal cases have been opened against priests of the UOC by the Security Service of Ukraine, sanctions have been imposed against 17 clerics, and 19 hierarchs have been deprived of their country's citizenship. Despite this, according to the State Service for Ethnopolitics and Freedom of Conscience of Ukraine, at least 5-6 million residents remain parishioners of the UOC in the country.