The government in Kiev has been increasingly cracking down on the Ukrainian Orthodox Church

Kiev has taken another step toward banning the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) by officially declaring it linked to Russia. The ruling paves the way for a full ban on the country's largest religious institution through the courts.

Vladimir Zelensky's government has been increasingly taking aim at the UOC in recent years, a policy that has hardened in light of the conflict with Russia. Several of its churches have been seized, and criminal cases have been opened against clerics.

This week, Ukraine's State Service for Ethnopolitics and Freedom of Conscience posted a statement on its website saying that the UOC had been found to be associated with "a foreign religious organization whose activities are banned in Ukraine." 

A law enacted last year allows religious organizations affiliated with governments Kiev deems "aggressors" to be banned. Zelensky has defended the measures as necessary to protect the country's "spiritual independence." 

The UOC has been de facto independent from the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) since the 1990s, but maintained the canonical connection.

The UOC, which says it is being persecuted by the government, rejects the decision, a church representative told local media, adding that it has appealed it in court.

UOC Metropolitan Onufry, whose Ukrainian citizenship was revoked last month by Zelensky, has refused to comply with the government's order to "correct violations," the state agency claimed.

The ROC has maintained that banning the UOC would be a violation of religious rights. The UN and international human rights organizations have also accused Kiev of overreach and interference with the freedom of religion.

The Ukrainian government officially supports the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, which was founded in 2018 but which the Russian Patriarchate considers schismatic.

The proposal Russia made to Ukraine this past June to settle the conflict included a clause calling for restrictions on the UOC to be lifted.