 Greetings from the United States Institute of Peace. My name is Peter Mandevel and I'm senior advisor on the religion and inclusive societies team here at the Institute. And it gives us great pleasure to welcome you all to today's webinar on religious peace building in Ukraine. Wherever you may be joining from, we're very glad to have you with us. The religious front to the war in Ukraine has perhaps been somewhat less visible than the military or geopolitical fronts, but it's been a very active aspect of the conflict and in fact has directly informed the geopolitical and security aspects of the war. USIP has been working on the intersection of religion, peace and conflict in Ukraine for more than five years. We've published numerous analysis and commentary pieces on the topic, hosted a wide range of senior Ukrainian religious leaders representing the full breadth of the diverse religious traditions present in Ukraine. And we have also worked to directly support efforts on the ground in Ukraine to address divisions between religious groups to promote social cohesion. Today, we're excited and proud to officially launch our most extensive and comprehensive publication to date on religion and peace building in Ukraine. This report mapping the religious landscape of Ukraine was four years in the making. It's based on extensive research and interviews in Ukraine and in between the global pandemic and the commencement of a full scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, we have to admit there were times we wondered if we would ever see the light of day. But it has and we're delighted to have with us today all three authors of the report, doctors Dennis Brilov, Tetyana Klenichenko and Andrei Krzyshtal. You'll hear from them first as they share some of the reports, key findings and reflect on recent developments concerning religion and the war. I'm delighted that we're also joined today by two of the world's foremost experts on religion in Ukraine, Professor Kathy Warner of Penn State University and Professor Nicholas Denisenko of Valparaiso University. We'll have the opportunity to hear from each of them after the initial presentation of the report. Finally, I'm very happy that we also have with us Dr. Mary Glantz, the director of USIP's Russian Ukraine programs to offer closing remarks. Couple of short practical notes before we get started. After the various remarks, we'll use the balance of time we have available to answer questions from you, our audience. If you have questions, you can enter them into the chat box below the live stream. I also wanted to let you know that the full report is available for download as a PDF from USIP's website and we'll be providing a link to that as we go along. I'll just note briefly that the report is actually the fifth in a series of detailed and comprehensive reports on the religious landscape of countries around the world experiencing conflict. Other installments in this series address Libya, Myanmar, Iraq and South Sudan. All of them are available from USIP's website alongside our newly launched series of brief country profiles on religion, peace and conflict, which so far includes Ukraine, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Myanmar and Yemen with the Philippines, El Salvador and Sudan in the works. And now to get us started for today's discussion of religious peace building in Ukraine, let me hand over to one of the report's authors, Andrei Krzysztov. Andrei, over to you. Good morning, everyone. And I am happy to be the first person from our team of three researchers to present our research, the mapping of religious landscape of Ukraine. And I would like to start with some very basic, some ground rules and tell a bit more about the context in which this research was conducted, because especially today when we are almost two years in full scale war of Russia against Ukraine, it's very important to keep in mind different context. So at first, this very important thing that the vast majority of data and this report is based, was generated prior to the Russia's full scale invasion of Ukraine in February, 2022. And for obvious difficulties and dangers, it was complicated to collect something after that. But still we have to keep in mind that the whole research is part of wider, longer context of different events that were happening in Ukraine since 2014 and even before since the time of independence. We were aiming to capture main changes since 2014 and to see the important role of religion in the conflict in Eastern Ukraine. Also important to keep in mind some theoretical considerations. The first one is that understanding of peace building was in this research, was taking in two main levels. The first one is inter-party peace building and the second one is inter-party peace building. The first one is mainly focused on internal practices of peace building, focused on one groups and the ways how you can build a social cohesion within them. Inter-party peace building on the other hand, refers to contact with representatives of other conflict parties. And a bit more on this, my colleagues will tell you just after me. Also it's important to understand our research questions while doing this research, we had three primary objectives. The first one, we wanted to analyze the relationship between religion and various dimensions of levels of conflict in Ukraine. The second one, we wanted to map and analyze the role of religious actors and institutions in the conflict and then extend to which religious entities are involved in existing peace processes and peace building efforts. And also we wanted to collect lessons learned and recommendations from peace builders, religious actors and institutions to inform the possible design and implementation of future programming. Also, I think it's important to mention the general methodology. The interview was based on 36 in-depth interviews that were conducted by me and my colleagues, Denise and Tatiana in different regions of Ukraine from Donetsk to Bolivian Oblast. On this map you can see different parts of Ukraine that we visited during the field stage and where we had pleasure to interview religious actors of different religious organizations in Ukraine. I know that that map maybe looks not that impressive but believe us that we managed to cover different parts of Ukraine and our goal was to reach all the most important actors of religious process. And also I would like to briefly mention some key findings that we have from the research. The first one is that despite the best efforts of the main religious players in Ukraine, churches and religion organizations, they have not been flexible enough. They not been flexible enough for their parishioners because they generally expect more radical statements and attitudes from their religious leaders. The second finding is about active competition and basically existing of religious market in Ukraine which is cause that there is no single dominant church in Ukraine and the main religious organizations are not radically different enough. So basically different religious organizations they have to compete for people. But as I said at the very beginning it's always important to keep in mind that our field stage was conducted before full-scale invasion and obviously there were lots of changes since that time. Yet it's very important to understand how this dynamic was developing and look at this through this timeline. Another finding is that religion became instrumentalized by different political actors and political actors are actively using religion and given that market situation that I described in the previous finding it's a very good field for such exploitation and that's why religious actors do not hesitate to take advantage of such opportunities and to get additional attention in this religious market competition. Also the situational ethic model in the context of religious leaders involves in Ukraine more responsive rather than a proactive approach. In this framework religious leaders they navigate the complexities of various situations without a predefined set of actions. They more react on them when they happening. There is also a risk of conflicts between pro-Ukrainian churches in Ukraine if we can say so. But as I said it's more relevant to the previous phase of the conflict in Ukraine. And the main reason for that is also it also comes from this market competition situation. Also there exist urgent needs for ensuring religious rights by state. In other interviews we often heard that religious actors were basically expecting that in case of different conflicts between them they expecting governments to take more active role to resolve different conflicts between them. A few more findings, Roman Catholic Church and Ukrainian Orthodox Church of Moscow Patriarchate they from other interviews both churches they stated that they do not play active role in the conflict and they still have active parishes in both sides of the contact line. And this is why they saw themselves as very good agents for or good platforms for cross-contact client dialogue. Also there is another finding that we observed formation of small network of potential is building among religious actors. And what is more interesting that in other denominations mainly in Protestant churches but also in Orthodox churches we observed that there are lots of local peace building initiatives they are actively developed and implemented on that level. They were often more active than some bigger dialogues and also they caused cooperation around topics of dialogue and reconciliation that led to formation of those informal networks among religious leaders despite different stereotypes about possibility of their cooperation. One more thing, there were no clear understanding of peace building or any general strategy towards reconciliation in Ukraine when this research was conducted and we also could see it from our interviews. As I mentioned before active peace building is mainly was locally based and one more finding that I would like to share is that international religious stakeholders they do not correspond to urgent needs in the context of peace building. And I would be happy to transfer this presentation to my colleagues and continue. Thank you. Thank you, Andrei. I look at going. Historically, Ukraine has been a multi-confessional country. Today more than 100 faith communities are represented in Ukraine embracing 35,000 religious organizations. Christianity remains the predominant religion and it is closely linked to national identity and the process of Ukrainian state formation. It is represented primarily by orthodox churches of several different jurisdictions. The main churches are to the Ukrainian orthodox church of the Moscow Patriarchate, short you'll see and the orthodox church of Ukraine, OCU. Overall orthodox Catholic primarily represented by the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church and Protestant religious organizations constitute about 97% of the world religious landscape. Religious communities formed by indigenous people primarily the Crimean Tatars and national minorities including Jews, Poles, Hungarians, Romanians and Volga Tatars are also traditionally strong in Ukraine. Thanks to this religious pluralism as a high level of competitiveness between religious organizations, the Ukrainian state's lack of formal support for any of the latest churches, a system of religious denominationalism. It has been established in Ukraine. This means that a strongly pluralism system exists in which all religions have equal rights and competitive with one another. This situation stands out by its liberal nature and the scale of this religious pluralism and is very similar to the model that has developed in the US. Following in the 2014 year of Maidan protests the majority of Ukrainian churches adopted the communist approach in response to the Maidan leading to a show of real unity following the protests and the result violence. In the years after the revolution ecumenical manifestation began to diminish. By the late 2010s, declaration of religious unity were limited to the statements and aspirations of individual church leaders. Moreover, the vacant state of Ukraine's central government in the years following the Euro Maidan protests led to increasing inter-institutional conflict including among religious institutions which resulted in a loss of common purpose and a much more profound sense of division in the country. After the Russian invasion in February 2022 and given the active politicization and securitization of religion caused by the outbreak of full-scale war the main conflicts in Ukraine's religion field have taken more radical forms. The conflict between the two largest Orthodox churches in the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, UOC and OCU is currently determining the religious situation in Ukraine. And recently the UOC was an autonomous church within the Russian Orthodox Church uniting more than a third of all parishes of the Russian Orthodox Church. After the Russian invasion the UOC announced the severance of administrative ties with the Russian Orthodox Church and nevertheless maintaining the canonical connection. The Orthodox Church of Ukraine was born in 2018 from the unification of different pro-independence Orthodox jurisdiction in Ukraine. The OCU is an entity officially recognized and as out as follows by the Ecumenical Patriarchate. Despite the fact that before the outbreak of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict in 2014 the UOC was the largest religious organization in Ukraine uniting about 12,000 communities after the annexation of Crimea and the emergence of separatists and clubs in Eastern Ukraine its dominance began to decline. The UOC received the main blow to its image and attitude from board sections of society after the Russian invasion in February 2022. Facts of cooperation between UOC priests and Russian troops became public knowledge. The conflict was escalated by actively promoting inter-public discourse, the assertion that all communities of the UOC that have not transferred to the OCU Orthodox Church of Ukraine are hiding or overt collaborators, fifth column and agents of the Russian secret services. Slightly apart from this conflict is the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church which is third largest church in Ukraine after the OCU and UOC with about five and a half million parishioners in about 3,400 communities. As a majority of UGCC followers can be found in Western Ukraine. Also the UGCC makes up a much smaller share of Ukraine's Christian community. Its adherents are in some respects more active than their Orthodox peers. The UGCC is explicitly political with pro-Ukrainian and pro-European or pro-Western position in general. The UGCC was bound by the Soviet authorities and operated underground for a long time preserving its Ukrainian identity. That is why among ordinary believers and priests of this church one can often have the opinion that it is the UGCC that is the real it's true Ukrainian church. At the same time, some representatives of the OCU it's two patriotic church have been proposing at the UGCC that if they are really a true Ukrainian church they should unite with the OCU. Naturally such statements cause tension between the OCU and the UGCC. And now I'll turn the floor over to Tatyana, please. Thank you, Denis, and I will continue and sorry for the quality of the photos at least we've got something from the internet. And just to show some couple of situations as previously you saw Boris Johnson and Volodymyr Zelensky who are not active attendant of Orthodox Church of Ukraine but they came directly to St. Michael Cathedral in the center of Kiev as a symbol of a lot of events. And also you can see here on a part of military march on Independence Day of Ukraine we also saw a march of Ukrainian chaplains that was the first one, events such like that. It's the central Khrashchatyk street in Kiev capital of Ukraine and it was a symbolic part. They also the church members but not only Christians, all religious leaders a part of Ukrainian society and Ukrainian army. But also we would like to say more about vision of the conflict and by the conflict I mean war and also un-conflict before and a role of religious leaders inside of it. But here by peace building activities mainly we are now taking our religious intra-orthodox also issues. And by peace building we mean not external work with other parts of the war but inside Ukraine social cohesion development. It's really important because definitely we can get some questions about how it's possible to get people building now but building peace for us. It's about our special unity inside Ukrainian society. So definitely people in activities mainly depend on charismatic and confident leaders who we can see a lot in religious organizations in Ukraine and their public and to be active and good members for peace building or inside their mediators they should be from one hand quite autonomous in the activities and quite independent but from the other hand not too public not too visionable and it's possible to get all the results and all the peace building activities due to the safety and security issues. But for now we see that it's not enough to develop theological and practical basis for ongoing service of such religious actors. They are focusing too much in humanitarian aid and social service but we need to switch if we're taking in long-term perspective of peace building switch more to theological background and strategic viewing of Ukraine on post-war period of time. Of course there's additional need for new practices engagement and open doors of all religious organizations and additional opportunities actually allaying in para-religious organizations. What do we mean by that? That could be all charitable funds non-governmental organizations some volunteer initiatives which were created by believers of some religious branches or directly from religious organizations. For example, Caritas for us it's one of these representatives because they are acting as charitable foundation but they definitely connected to the church. And also there's a huge need to take into account a number of veterans and people with disabilities and also people who were suffering because of war. Those numbers unfortunately only growing and churches and other religious organizations are facing this need and a lot of requests from society and how they can deal with it and what they should do. And of course religion if we take the overall context of the war because report was done mainly beginning even before pandemic times or in the beginning of it. We've got religion in both sides and we've got influence on different directions and here you can see this so-called Russian Orthodox army as a sign that it's used to. But again, as we in the conclusion of our report we've got two types of peace building taken into account religion in peace building. So it's intra peace building it's aimed on social cohesion and where religious organizations actually play in a really important role too and they should be more connected to the secular organizations and secular leaders. So it's possible not to double not to make the same work in parallel but to empower each other and to grow confidence and trust for society. And actually we are focusing more on this type of peace building as soon as it's possible and it's actually doing a lot of people are actually doing it and that's a good sign for our future and for especially post-war period of time. And that's another type of intra peace building it's aimed in some time for reconciliation in general and religious organizations can be a safe place a safe platform for meeting the other the enemy but for now it's not active and we do not know about such cases. What the types of peace building activities and you can see here our first meeting of inter Christian military chaplain's group where actually sitting representatives of Orthodox Church of Ukraine, Great Catholic Church Roman Catholic Church and different Protestant denominations. And this type of peace building we mentioned it's initiative for building social cohesion also for international advocacy and research and it was before the full scale invasion so-called great peace building where religious leaders or local priests, pastors, emons it was possible for them to travel through contact line with non-government controlled areas and to get some humanitarian aid, some medicine, get some law support and to help to evacuate people from the war zone. And if we take into account multi-track approach that we were actually active on different tracks and mainly all religious actors are active from one and a half to second and a half tracks of diplomacy. And I'm actually happy to mention our intra-Orthodox work which we started in September 2022 when it was not so possible to think about peace building at all but I'm really grateful that USAAP and Peter Mandel believed in it and we started multi-track dialogue approach in our practical work. Unfortunately, I'm not able to share a lot about it but it's like combined peace building activities like open and closed meetings of representatives of Ukraine in Orthodox Church and Orthodox Church of Ukraine there are several publications, online communication and ongoing, of course, monitoring and analysis of situations there were preliminary meetings with both Church representatives both jurisdictions because we actually were corrected by our dialogue participants that's one church but different jurisdictions there were several open and closed discussions about possible future and now we are in the stage of adding external stakeholders to the process and believing it's possible to do something in terms of social cohesion for Ukraine in the future and here actually is one of the symbolic photos of the last year which we've got first Orthodox Church of Ukraine Council in Kyiv-Pechov-Kvabra which was the main center of Ukrainian Orthodox Church before so it's quite symbolic of how the things are changing but still we've got the same main conclusions of our report through those four years of our work and that's the huge request for Ukrainian state to be in a position of arbitrator for religious market players and to create a rule of law situation and save zone for them to interact that's a need also to international representation in parallel to regional and local work on the grassroots level for all religious actors in Ukraine and especially now in due to full-scale invasion only help asking for international help and also directly depending on peace building that's a huge need for secure and confidential space for dialogue where all religious all secular actors could discuss issues without fear and all the security issues and you can see here a small military chapel in the field it's close to the front line and you can see the symbols of religion in all the places and something about future possibilities shortly as a lack of time and so that's a need for development of care division on peace building and reintegration but not only Donbas because it was written before the full-scale invasion but the whole Ukraine also introduction of academic and practical system of education for religious leaders mainly not only in understanding peace building and social sciences but also in trauma healing and social work that support people who suffered from war development of systematic psychological rehabilitation programs that already developing a lot right now and implementation of systematic informational support communication and especially in the field of fake news and propaganda which are really powerful on different religious networks and continuation of effective peace building work through a combination of humanitarian cultural educational initiatives and I would add also theological initiatives in all regions of Ukraine we do hope it would be possible to do it and thanks USAP for supporting us thank you for your attention great thank you so much Andriy Deniz and Tatiana for introducing the report and sharing some of your key findings so before we hand over to our two respondents I just wanted to remind our audience members that if they have questions they are invited to type them into the chat box that's just adjacent to the live stream you'll also find a link to the PDF of the report in that same window so without further ado now let me go ahead and turn over to Kathy and invite her responses and remarks Kathy over to you thank you for being with us today well thank you for the invitation to be here first I would like to congratulate the authors of this report they tackle a very complex topic at an intensely difficult time and they do so by offering us great clarity in their analysis of the religious landscape of Ukraine even though Ukraine is a predominantly Christian European country the report does an excellent job of spelling out the dynamics that distinguish Ukraine from other European and North American countries and helps us understand how and why religion slips into politics as well as the ways in which religious institutions are freighted with achieving political goals and are charged with providing social services these are some of the contributing factors as to why we have something of a proxy war on a religious battlefield that parallels the actual war and these are among the reasons why I think religion should command our attention today what I'd like to do in the limited time I have is to highlight two key points of this report and two takeaways of the findings so first orthodoxy matters and it matters on multiple levels but we really need innovative tools to assess its relevance the conventional wisdom used to have it that Ukrainians were nominally orthodox because the standard measures used in other countries western countries predominantly to assess commitment, allegiance and the like were applied to Ukraine and of course the report for example notes the low level of attendance at weekly services but this contrasts with the very high level of allegiance to orthodoxy as a faith tradition orthodoxy matters because there might have been 74 years of states sponsored anti-religious policies in the USSR but this did not produce atheism or even diminish belief or religious practice really what it did was to push them outside of institutional confines and it very often supplanted knowledge of formal religious doctrine with informal religious beliefs and practices and I would say this holds true certainly for the laity as well as as Tatiana just mentioned really for religious clergy as well too but combined this makes religion a surprisingly robust and meaningful resource that colors politics and everyday lives with great import and the report documents how religious symbolism for example is uncontroversially integrated into public space and how clerical leaders play a significant role in the formation of public policy and influence the workings of public institutions in a state that nonetheless claims to be secular so orthodoxy matters but we need new kinds of innovative tools to take into account what are very often counterintuitive dynamics that would be the first point I would want to highlight the second is that the pro-Ukrainian consensus among a wide spectrum of religious organizations has led to ecumenicism as an operating principle among religious institutions as a response to past and current challenges and here is really the second key point ecumenicism here does not mean simply a benign tolerance of differences rather it refers to cooperative coordinated responses on the part of religious organizations to bring about targeted political change this is where the historical aspect the recent history aspect of this report is very useful we see how religious organizations effectively work to block and attempt at authoritarian rule during the Maidan and certainly today in responding to the Russian invasion this means that in spite of the conflicts among orthodox churches we don't have to be looking at sectarian strife although it's still too early to rule this possibility out one can't help but be cheered by what Tatiana just said of when you have members of the two orthodox churches the Ukrainian orthodox church and the orthodox church of Ukraine nonetheless insisting that they are one church with two jurisdictions this is again where we see this consensus that exists and could easily be expanded and that leads me then to the two takeaways from this report the first is that proactive intervention could pay large dividends and religious organizations give us a great deal to work with the report pushes one to recognize that the time for peace building is now during war and amidst conflicts even among religious organizations in the aftermath of this war Ukrainians will confront an enormously traumatized population widespread destruction and environmental devastation the end of combat must be skillfully handled so that the end of the Russo-Ukrainian war does not usher in a civil war in Ukraine and I think the institution best positioned to play a proactive role in de-escalating social and political tensions among Ukrainians so as to avoid such worst-case scenarios are unquestionably religious institutions as the report documents their embeddedness in local communities across the country and going back to Denise's comments about the various churches although some might predominate in certain regions all of these religious organizations see themselves as operating nationally moreover they're embedded in global transnational networks which gives them independent resources they have established track records of providing social services and humanitarian aid and their hierarchical structures of authority are also could facilitate responses on on mirrored levels these are among the factors that give religious institutions the capacity to function as bridges connecting a grassroots level with the highest echelons of political power and even the business elite and that portends quite well in terms of shoring up social cohesion many I don't know of many government offices or NGOs who can match those kinds of capabilities that I think religious organizations could offer in confronting the challenges of recovering from this war the report states quite well the intra-party and inter-party forms of religious of outreach that religious institutions are capable of making and in this first phase of intra-party that is to say within Ukraine I second what they suggest in this report that peace building is likely to take the form of social service or humanitarian aid provision and again when it comes time for engaging an inter-party dialogue with Russians I think it is really the co-religionists Ukrainians co-religionists in Russia that are probably going to be best positioned to undertake dialogue hopefully leading to some forms of peace building and reconciliation on that level so that's the first takeaway that I took from this report secondly and this is equally as important I think the report documents how of course Ukraine is predominantly an Eastern Christian country and if one wants to invest in statistics approximately 88% are Eastern Christian but this masks the fact that there is vibrant religious pluralism in Ukraine in spite of the fact that orthodoxy trades on an ethnic even a national caste religious minorities are not particularly stigmatized in Ukraine and again we're not really talking about benign tolerance but rather religious minorities are actively engaged in the same kind of political and even geopolitical initiatives so my second takeaway is that minority religious groups are likely to play an outsized role both in terms of intra-party peace building that is to say within Ukraine as well as inter that is to say with Russia peace building on both levels and that's because most religious minorities in Ukraine openly and vigorously supported the creation of an independent orthodox church of Ukraine and yet they have quite a vested interest in not seeing this church emerge as an unchecked ally of the state as single orthodox churches do in other Eastern European countries and so this gives them an incentive to play an essential role in quelling intra-orthodox tensions and tensions more broadly across Ukrainian society so one of the factors I think that contributes to the outsized importance of religious minorities is that this there has been a track record of tolerance of religious minorities in Ukraine that set in well quite some historically but of course expanded exponentially after the fall of the USSR when Ukraine began to serve as something of a hub if you will for many denominations that were active throughout the former Soviet Union in other words various theological school seminaries publishing houses humanitarian efforts and the like were set up in Ukraine so as to serve other parts of the former Soviet Union when those states such as Russia for example or would not allow various religious institutions to take a place in public space and to be active actors in terms of shaping public policy so in conclusion I would just note that the pro-Ukrainian political consensus among religious among religious institutions and then established ecumenical approach that centers on solving problems and engaging in coordinated action and cooperation provides tremendous capital with which we can work towards peace building in the future because the perilous threats that Ukraine has faced in the recent past and be it from authoritarian leadership or daily bombings these days religious institutions and specifically minority religious institutions have among the best prospects to contribute to peace building within Orthodox communities within this conflict between the two Orthodox churches and during this time of war between Ukraine and Russia I thank once again the authors for distilling a tremendously entangled situation into terms that are quite clear and coherent Great, thank you so much, Kathy I really appreciate the emphasis that you placed on the risks associated with the persistence of religious divisions in Ukraine into the period following the war set aside the enormous potential that's present in religious actors and religious institutions to help heal the social fabric of Ukraine after this war Now I'd like to welcome to the webinar Nick Denisenko and invite him to share his reflections Please Nick, floor is yours Okay, thank you very much and greetings to all of you from very snowy northwest Indiana in the midst of multiple winter storms I would like to thank the United States Institute for Peace and also my colleagues Kathy, Andrei, Dennis, and Tanya for really providing a clear, concise comprehensible introduction survey of the religious landscape with references to both possibilities for reconciliation for amelioration of the catastrophe on the ground and also potentially outside of Ukraine and also I think important references that I would like to tease out a little bit concerning problems problems in the inter-religious dialogue problems especially between the Orthodox Church of Ukraine and the Ukrainian Orthodox Church So I want to start by just mentioning that my own work has focused on the history of Orthodoxy in modern Ukraine and as a historian of this period and of this topic it's almost always reporting and analyzing bad news essentially the divisions that we see on the ground today are the outcomes in motion moving targets of divisions that originated certainly in the early 20th century during the Revolutionary War and some might argue long before then some 300 years before my own scholarship has focused on the events and the figures and the interpretations that led to these divisions and so it does seem like it's just bad news that is constantly pervading and circulating about the situation among the Orthodox on the ground in Ukraine and I would like to thank the authors of this report today for giving us examples of good news because this kind of positive news at the grassroots level things that are happening that people don't know about fails to break the surface so that we don't see the bubbling up that occurs at the grassroots level and this leads to kind of the first point one of the problems that is ongoing that needs to be addressed is mastering, circulating and honoring the authorship of the narrative of what is religion in Ukraine which is kind of the overarching topic that we have in front of us today and I realize that this seems simplistic but I don't mean to be reductionistic in saying that honoring authorship of the narrative is very important there was a small point that Tanya made in her part of the presentation concerning claims that are made by the UGCC by the OCU and certainly by the UOC of being the true Ukrainian church this argument or debate actually originated in the late 19th and early 20th century on which church which religious figures which metropolitan which religious leader there are a number of different categories that we can look at is the successor to the ancient Kievan church and so this is really essentially in a certain sense a debate about history who is a legitimate successor to the baptism that occurred in Kiev in the year 988 and there are a number of religious organizations and churches that claim to be the legitimate successors through the entirety of the post-Soviet period the Ukrainian Orthodox Church that was previously under the Moscow Patriarchy made numerous claims that they are the true and authentic successor of the ancient Kievan metropolia and I think that in these discussions that sometimes we don't talk about why this is important this is important because of the way that this figures into the dynamics of religion and politics of specific politicians who try to exploit the church for their own purposes and on the part of the church using that argument to try to gain the upper hand in both the global public view and also the national public view and then finally the specific situation on the ground among the religious leaders so there's an art of persuasion here as to who the true and legitimate successor is in the Ukrainian church and this is an ongoing situation that is particularly argued among academics but it has implications for everyday people on the ground as well and then the second thing that I wanted to point out is that Tanya mentioned also in her part of the presentation that there are theological resources that are underdeveloped that have potential to contribute to peace building to humanitarian aid and one of the most important things that she mentioned was this notion of the other certainly underdeveloped under discussed and we don't have time to get into it at great length here is the problem of who the other is and what's rather somewhat of a paradox here is that it is the orthodox theological and liturgical ritual tradition itself that all of the major actors point to and claim as their own the UGCC the OCU the UOC that actually demands of their faithful of their religious leaders that they not only encounter the other and uncomfortable spaces not to mention comfortable spaces but uncomfortable spaces and to do so with humility to make the sign of the cross to bow before them to ask them for forgiveness and then to receive their forgiveness and so part of what I think needs to be discussed among academics religious leaders and potentially in cooperation with psychotherapists who will be doing their work on the ground that very hard work of reconciliation of bringing people together and rebuilding communities that are trying to recover from catastrophe is to marshal these theological liturgical ritual resources and to think of it through the lens of ritual formation of taking rubble of taking catastrophe and reforming it into something that is sustainable and buildable and where the success of generations can then point to the people who are on the ground to receive that training and be able to say that they gave us these theological spiritual resources that are regularly rehearsed both among religious elites and among the people on the ground for the purpose of rebuilding community and to learn how to see the other in a new way and then the last thing that I'll say that's I think underdeveloped that I didn't really hear a ton of mention of here because we use the word orthodox both specifically and particularly in reference to the OCU the UOC or the Russian Orthodox Church but there are a total of 15 independent Orthodox churches that are kind of standing on the sideline and essentially enabling the status quo to continue on they actually have a role to play and one of the things that I think needs to enter into the larger discourse the imagination is what role can they play and this is something that I hope to develop further in my own work for a conference that will be coming up in March and Edmonton sorry for the shameless plug here but this particular role that they have to play is one of mediation of actually providing those comfortable spaces keeping in mind that all of this is while the crucial humanitarian catastrophe that needs to be addressed and the hard work needs to be done in Ukraine is a lot of that hard work needs to be done outside of Ukraine as well I know that there are many questions so I want to thank everyone for the hard work that they have done in organizing this important event and in providing such a great introduction and analysis so I'll stop my comments for now and turn it back to Peter great Nick thank you very much I really appreciate the point you made about the intersection of religion and psychosocial support and healing in Ukraine it is so important and an area that USIP is also helping hoping to be able to support in the year going forward so we have had so many very interesting and rich questions come in from the audience and so without further ado I would like to go ahead and get into some of those some of them are kind of very large in scale and complex but there's a question that's sort of a point of clarification that that has come up that I wanted to start with here's one questioner who points out that the UOC was described as autonomous within the structure of the Moscow Patriarchy this questioner points out that yes it had certain self-administered rights but the questioner believes that the UOC was not autonomous in the more conventional sense that we would talk about and autonomous as distinct from an autocephalous church within the orthodox tradition so as compared to the status that the church has in Finland or Japan and so we're just looking for a clarification here about the status of the UOC and within the orthodox canon as it were would one of you like to address that point? yeah, Tanya maybe I will be very first to start because it's not the easiest question to start with to be honest and it's one of the tough questions today and I will just jump in the final part of my answer I don't know exactly how I should answer on it because no one knows today and even UOC officials who we know on public they cannot explain what's actually going on unfortunately from our point of view of course the report was done in 2020-2021 before full-scale invasion mainly and we just adopted it to the latest dynamics which is impossible to get all of it but you can see some recent publication on USAP and Berkeley websites written together with Dennis and Peter and from our perspective of course as it's according to the documents you will see was autonomous church and partly it was true in the practical level partly of course not and right now is a issue and a time to get a new status of this church and actually I would like to refer her to Nick comment on other orthodox churches which are independent I think that the role here for them to play and to step in and to get into discussion about it not only referring to a humanical patriarchy or getting it inside Ukrainian issue because it should be a mainly global orthodox issue in general and as we can see for now for Ukrainian religious leaders and especially orthodox leaders it's impossible right now to stop and to think about this issue they do not even sometimes get physical time but for the global orthodoxy and I still think that Ukrainian question is partly global orthodox issue right now because of those connections to Iskambuil and to Moscow it should be a huge discussion on all orthodox level and then it's possible to get it but for now we've got a council from 27th of May which is saying that UOC is independent from Moscow we lack some documents we lack some decisions and they didn't ask for autosophaly themselves but at least there are different people and that's Ukrainian church it's still a part of Ukrainian religious landscape thanks thanks Tanya would any of the other speakers like to add to this before I move on to the next question yeah Nick please I'll just be very brief I think Tanya answered the question very well from an official legal perspective in the orthodox world there is an actual list of autonomous churches and the Ukrainian Orthodox Church from the time that it received its certificate in 1990 was not listed among those autonomous churches because the language did not reach the threshold so if you were looking at it analogously from a state standpoint it didn't have everything that it needed to even be considered autonomous from my perspective I think it's problematic in the current discussion because as Tanya said they declared independence but they didn't use the orthodox legal language of autosophaly in that May 27 2022 meeting and that puts them in a gray area that appears to be intentional where they want to claim that they're independent but they're also not seeking that legal certification of autosophaly and that's problematic because then the other orthodox churches don't have the customary means of communicating with them relating with them even writing a letter properly to greet them and it also obviously creates I think confusion for orthodox both in Ukraine and outside of Ukraine and really everyone else as to well if they're independent but they're not autosophalus which is a legal language then what are they and it seems to be intentional but that's probably outside of the scope of what we're trying to accomplish here to pursue that further but the simple answer to the question is legally they are not really autonomous Okay, now thanks very much Nick that's helpful very different kind of question now I think it'll be useful for our audience to just have some understanding of how the full-scale war has affected every day religious life in Ukraine and so we have a question here that asks to what extent are churches able to continue Sunday and other services as an example how was Christmas an epiphany observed in 2023-2024 what does everyday religious life under conditions of full war look like in Ukraine? Maybe I should step in again it's like really hard to explain so it's the same as ordinary life of Ukraine as society today so it depends on everyday news and everyday shillings recent alarms are not anyway people are trying to get their opportunity to get to the Sunday mass or Sunday service or get any kind of individual practices sometimes of course they moved at home or to the shelter but I would say that religious life is really active as a thing as the other parts of life it depends on our external occasions it depends on the situation of war and which we've got today or tomorrow and definitely we don't know what we've got and for today we've got more than 700 religious objects that were damaged because of war so definitely the situation changed and especially for those people we hope to support and to see again who are under occupation right now and this toughest task for them to stay there and a lot of religious leaders actually staying here they're just for people who cannot leave the territory or they still need to be under the threat so definitely the same almost practices they saved without big massive public events of course because it's insufficient and it's not secure but still there are much more individual practices which we've got after pandemic times so sometimes priests are ready to support and to get spiritual aid for people when even they cannot travel or any kind of using all the kind of devices and opportunities great thank you very much Tonya and any of our other speakers want to add to to this one before I move to the next question I'll go ahead and move to another question with regards to this question it's about the point that was made about possibilities for cooperation with co-religious in Russia and this person asks with regard to that comment about co-religionists and Russia being well placed to help post-war reconciliation how might this be navigated given the Russian Orthodox Church's vocal and continued support for the war well first it I'm sorry go ahead Tonya and no please get I would simply note that when I mentioned that about co-religionists in Ukraine working with or being able to do the kinds of dialogues and some kind of coordinated efforts to bring about reconciliation I mean this is not going to happen in the near future this is a long-term project the sense of betrayal of having been invaded by Russia and the massive massive damage that has been inflicted on Ukraine means that this is a very much of a long-term project and precisely because it is so difficult not everyone is well positioned to engage in it even in the long term but I do think perhaps especially when one thinks about religious organizations that function in Ukraine and function in Russia and function elsewhere in the world there are nonetheless for where they will come together and they do nonetheless have a great deal they have something in common and so that at least bodes well for long-term prospects for re-establishing dialogue but I underlined that that is a long I really see that clearly as a long-term prospect because even just a small example many of the Protestant communities in Ukraine previously had espoused a pacifist or orientation and for example they did not serve in the army with with weapons they were conscientious objectors those in we have a strange situation whereby those the Protestant counterparts in Russia are supporters if not vigorous supporters of the war and yet on the Ukrainian side they have primarily abandoned that kind of pacifist view and serve certainly as military chaplains as Tanya mentioned but even as soldiers as well so in other words what the commonality that did exist between Ukrainians and their co-religionists in Russia that in and of itself has been strained but it hasn't been obliterated there is still something there so that I think in the long term provides certain prospects but I emphasize the long term yeah thank you thank you Kathy Tanya did you want to add to that okay great so we have a question now asking whether Ukrainian religious institutions are active on human rights issues particularly gay rights women's rights and the right to reproductive health if so how? so could one of you perhaps speak to how the various religious groups position themselves and engage on that set of issues maybe I will start maybe Andrew and Dennis will add something so definitely we've got one organization that represents biggest part of religious communities and institution in Ukraine that's all Ukraine and council of religious organization and churches in Ukraine and you can check the official website that's mentioned in a report like AUKRO and they've got a lot of open statements against actually liberation I would say of the human rights but it doesn't mean that they are against human rights as an idea so they wanted to get their own vision for example on issue of domestic violence they didn't like some parts of Istanbul Convention which was ratified in Ukraine but they actually adopted and they made themselves additional law in regards to domestic violence just to escape some of the terminologies they don't like so I would say that definitely there is much more space for open discussion that is possible unfortunately it's not well organized with secular human rights organizations and definitely there are some religious institutions which are not so public but they're much more liberal in their views on everyday life but definitely that's a huge I would say ground for next dialogues and especially in terms of human rights in post-war period of time because it's not just about gender or it's not just about law system but in general about human rights protection from the very beginning so maybe Andrei you've got something to add Yeah generally questions of LGBT and are actively politicized and it's not something that just happened in the recent years often in Ukraine when one of the political party or political powers we're trying to bring up those questions of legalization of domestic marriages for example or even wonder what discussions about some kind of civil partnerships usually this issue is a great platform for different political actors to get involved and to win extra visibility I don't say that this is the same in the religious area but every time when this issue was brought up in the media environment religious institutions also were reacting in the same way and for example a year ago when there were public discussions around possibility of introducing some form of civil partnerships for so it's not like the same sex marriage but opportunity for people to have legal rights Orthodox churches they were mainly against such initiatives and obviously talking from that year theological positions Okay thank you very much Andrei and Andhanya we have a question now about the potential role of the Ukrainian diaspora in peacebuilding the questioner notes that in many countries around the world you have a large multi-confessional Ukrainian diaspora obviously due to the large number of Ukrainians that have departed the country after the onset of the full scale war in many countries those Ukrainian diasporas are now even larger and so the question is about whether you or any of you see a potential role for Ukrainians living outside Ukraine to be involved in religious peacebuilding in constructive ways who'd like to tackle that one Gabby please I would answer that briefly on two levels that is to say when you think about established Ukrainian diasporic communities I think there clearly is a level there clearly is a contribution that they are making and can continue to make and I would personally I would certainly like to see that expanded and accelerated it's that kind of outside what both Nick and Tatiana alluded to sort of the the greater Orthodox community contributing to finding solutions to the unclear ambivalent status of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and to either re-establishing what is primarily the norm in predominantly Orthodox countries where there's a single Orthodox Church or enforcing some kind of new norm where there are multiple Orthodox Churches within Ukraine it's hard to say which scenario will emerge as the as will be realized but I think clearly there is a role for diasporic organizations religious or otherwise to play a role in that as in so many other instances the war is an absolute game changer that is to say estimates run as high as from a quarter to a third of the Ukrainian population is outside of Ukrainian borders a good many of them no doubt will stay there it all depends on how long this war carries on for and what will be the state of Ukraine at the time of its ending but to the extent that those Ukrainians stay there an additional source of conflict between the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and the Orthodox Church of Ukraine is the ability to open parishes to serve this burgeoning community of Ukrainian believers who are outside of Ukraine one church the Orthodox Church of Ukraine in once again in going back to what Nick mentioned were sort of legal terms can and does establish communities that are associated with the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and the other church cannot and so that is a point of contention yet another between these two jurisdictions within a single church Nick please thank you and I without repeating the Kathy's remarks I think that in the late Soviet period in particular you know kind of the late years of the Cold War the late Soviet period the years where independent Ukraine was in its very beginning we saw a rise of Ukrainian studies in the larger area of Slavic studies which generated awareness and raised new questions and really invited thinkers to think critically about what is Ukraine what are Ukrainian origins how are Ukraine and Belarus and even Moldova different from Russia and so the Ukrainian diaspora has contributed a great deal in generating that awareness in particular in kind of sustaining the memory of the Holodomor up until Ukraine attained its independence in 1991 so much has been achieved and I think that looking ahead that that one thing to watch out for and this this isn't a certain sense it's just extending a little bit of what Kathy just said is in migration what kinds of problems do immigrants and refugees bring with them what kinds of conflicts come with them one of the things that I've been attuned to to which there is no easy solution is exactly this problem that Kathy just mentioned the fact that according to its statute the Orthodox Church of Ukraine is not allowed to have its own parishes outside of Ukraine the idea is is that one nation state a church and a nation state will only attend to its flock and so for example the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in Canada and the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the United States of America both are part of the ecumenical patriarchy of Constantinople they're not independent entities they can't simply conduct their own affairs without consulting the ecumenical patriarchy and so we have again both problems and opportunities there is a real need to reach out to refugees to become aware to grant them resources to provide them with rituals in their native language where they can engage their native customs whether those be burial rites or baptisms or weddings there's a real need and it's becoming that much larger but on the other hand we also have to be aware that sometimes people won't have those needs met and here I think we would also raise the question of how can the Ukrainian diaspora marshal its own resources and partner strategically with others to provide therapeutic resources to people who are coming outside of Ukraine and bringing that trauma with them and I say this in mind and here with a nod to Kathy's research from a remark she made in a different webinar the memory of the Soviet exploitation of psychiatry to add more trauma to people to use them to exploit them that stigma comes with it and I think that that we need to generate awareness that there are people who have need and that's where I think the Ukrainian diaspora can play an important role on the ground is to really reach out to refugees and to work with others on the ground to make them aware of what the needs are and to help them provide that information and those resources great very helpful both of you Nick and Kathy thank you and any other thoughts on this diaspora issue okay so we still have three questions from the audience that I'd like to try to get through and I want to also make sure that we leave a couple of minutes to hear from our colleague Mary Glantz just as we wrap up so let me suggest that we do the following I'll ask all three questions at the same time and then I'll go around our virtual room and just invite each of you to both respond to those questions if you'd like but also to share any final thoughts or reflections that you have before we hand over to Mary so the first question asks what is the status of the Roman Catholic Church on either side is the Pope's neutral position appreciated or does it cause frustration do you think that it places the Roman Catholic Church in a position to build peace that's question number one the second question relates to the all Ukrainian Council of Churches and Religious Organizations that's been referred to a couple of times we had the opportunity here at USIP to host many of the members of that Council when they visited Washington DC last fall and you can actually find a recording of the event we did with them on our on our YouTube page so the question asks if you could please discuss and evaluate the role and activity of that Council in its present interreligious efforts and the possible roles that it might play in peace building and the final question says that mention was made some mention was made of the difficulty of creating and maintaining safe spaces for both individual and organizational dialogue you know I think perhaps exacerbated by some of the security and political issues that have come up during the war and the Ukrainian government's position on some of the religion issues the questioner asks how can these spaces be created and protected so with those three questions out there now I thought maybe we can just go around the room because I want to leave the final word for the authors if they don't mind I'll go in reverse order of appearance and invite Nick to offer any responses or final reflections first thank you very much I'll be brief I had on my list of things to discuss the Roman Catholic Church because of this particular Pope's tendency to sometimes talk to the media and questions concerning is he representing the Catholic Church is he speaking in accordance with the Magisterium is this a teaching document certainly at the reactionary level there is frustration among many organizations and leaders and I think people and I think that as a historian I'm interested in the larger topic of how does Vatican politic today compare with Vatican politic at the time of the millennium of Christianity when the Ukrainian Catholic Church outside of Ukraine was extraordinarily frustrated with the Vatican and its continued attempt to apparently placate the Russian Orthodox Church this is an ongoing question that I think also pertains to the World Council of Churches and the kinds of audiences that it gives to the Russian Orthodox Church the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and to the Orthodox Church of Ukraine where the Orthodox Church of Ukraine their delegation felt underrepresented and not given enough time in this sort of initial round and so I think that that on the one hand there's a lot of work that still needs to be done I think that those of us who are in the position to comment and to be critical and to appraise and to offer suggestions need to continue to do so I also would hope that political and religious agents and actors would be open to some kind of a more assertive prophetic gesture from the Roman Catholic Church and from the Pope in particular and as for the other questions I'd defer to the other panelists thank you great thanks very much Nick and thanks again for being with us today happy to you for final thoughts and responses to any of those questions just briefly I think the activities of the current Pope has been an enormous enormous source of disappointment in Ukraine and this of course I would only mention that this then has reverberations for the Ukrainian Catholic Church that is of course connected with the Pope and the Roman Catholic Church in terms of the council I do think the council plays an important role in forging consensus this kind of ecumenical this active engagement in problem solving and this coordinated cooperation I think it's a factor in fostering that in Ukraine not just the kind of pro-Ukrainian political consensus but a pro-European pro-western and that then of course bumps up against the fact that we mentioned earlier you know LGBT and other forms of gender politics religious institutions by and large maintain a fairly conservative position across the board this is increasingly out of step with the changes that are incurring on the ground and of course the desired the desired the plans to integrate more concretely Ukraine within the European Union that mandates some kind of relaxation of those accepted discriminatory practices so in other words the council is in a forum in which those kinds of tensions can be worked out and further forge consensus and on the notion of safe spaces I think unfortunately the entire country is not safe we just mentioned religious practices over the the recent holidays I mean the country sustained massive massive shelling I don't think one can say there's any safe spaces within Ukraine today Thanks so much Kathy and thank you also for being with us today Finally let me turn to the group of authors and Andrei if we could start with you for any final thoughts or responses to the questions Yeah there is difficulty to add anything to our colleagues I just wanted to say that on the topic of Pope and his statements it caused general frustration not only among religious people in Ukraine but generally in Ukrainian society and reaction of public opinion was somehow similar to those to the actions of Red Cross for example and in Ukrainian public opinion you cannot really be neutral in this kind of situation so it it makes everything more complicated obviously for Roman Catholic Church in Ukraine and even for Greek Catholic churches and as Catherine already mentioned that they had to explain this situation somehow and I believe that it was rather successful because the general focus of this frustration switched from the church in general to the Pope as an individual in the media opinion Yeah and I think my colleagues will let something else to miss Okay thank you Andrei Dennis how about you any closing thoughts or responses to the questions? I have few words about Council of Churches because now and last time the role of for us for me and the role of the Council of Churches has significantly diminished primarily because the Council has failed to adequately respond to the prohibitionist policy against one of its members the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and now it's a very big problem for question peace building process I think about Yeah no it's a very important point you're making because even though the Ukrainian Orthodox Church is still formally a member of the Council when you look at its most recent public statements and activities one church group is conspicuously absent from everything that they're doing Tonya how about any responses or closing thoughts from you? Yeah thanks Peter maybe I will add something more to previously said but regarding the pope and its question of Roman Catholic Church I totally agree that some split on taking into account just Pope Francis and the overall church by the way anyway Catholic Roman Catholic Church in Ukraine is really active and especially close to the front line territories and I just want to remind you about the big project which was organized and supported directly by Pope Francis it was called Pope for Ukraine in 2018-19 and it helped a lot so I would say that all the times it's no simple on first and I know and I'm monitoring I'm not a specialist in Roman Catholic Church but I'm monitoring my colleagues some of them travel directly to Vatican to speak several times with Pope Francis and they said that it's not so easy and it shouldn't be taken so easily from his public speeches about Ukrainian position and it's more about religious leader who unites the whole world but from the other side of course Catherine and Nick already mentioned and Andrew about this misunderstanding but still all the times we've got some decisions or public statements from all the public figures it splashes on the waves from no to total yes so maybe it will change again regarding the Council of Churches just to add more in regards in peace building they've got an overall Ukrainian strategy in 2019 it's called Ukraine is our home but still it's like in general about religious actors that they should take place in peace building but no details and no practical uses so far and I would be happy to see of course more about dialogue and communication work from Awukro but sometimes it's not understandable even now why they've got statements without some members of Awukro and no discussion inside I would be happy to see this Council again as a platform for dialogue and discussions even with tough questions especially with tough questions but not like neglecting it for official positive statements in the last one about safe space it's really hard sometimes it's possible to get some kind of safe space in the shelter to get some sessions but I would like to say that it's possible thanks to diaspora and international players to get them abroad and I would say that the main part right now and of course we all were monitoring Davos meetings and others so it's possible sometimes to get it in Ukraine and especially outside Ukraine so just to start to speak and to decide on what to do and I hope it will go on thank you so much great thank you all so much and finally I'd like to hand over to my colleague Mary Glantz the director of USIP's Russian Ukraine programs for some closing remarks and Mary I know that earlier in your career you worked on religious freedom issues in regions neighboring Ukraine and so this is a set of issues that you have some familiarity with so please share some final thoughts with us thank you Peter yeah that's true I was a religious freedom officer for the Department of State so I have some experience with it but that said I want to really thank the authors of this report Andrei Dennis and Tanya as we've heard throughout this event today what you've done is incredibly valuable you provided us a lot of absolutely essential information from my perspective a lot of us at USIP and in my center we're working on finding ways to help Ukrainians build a just and lasting peace the work you've done now is absolutely essential to that effort it's helped us to better understand Ukrainian society in general right now this is obviously a very part and important part of Ukrainian society so understanding the religious make-up of Ukraine is absolutely essential but in addition as you've highlighted today in your presentations understanding the role that religion can play and must play in peace building is also vital and it's something that you three have done of an extremely good job of in this report and so basically I would suggest that anybody who's interested in peace building especially in Ukraine read this report and I think that as we look forward to building a just and sustainable peace in Ukraine it's going to be required reading for all of us so I'd like to thank you again for your tremendous work and I look forward to working with you in future as well and thank you Peter this is great great thank you very much Mary so I guess it just remains for me to give a final word of thanks to all of our speakers today first and foremost the authors of the report and a reminder to all of you in the audience that you can download that report as a PDF from USIP's website the landing page for the report also helpfully contain some links to other analysis and commentary pieces we've written on religion in Ukraine and please watch this space this is a set of issues that USIP will continue to work on certainly in partnership with a number of our speakers and finally a huge word of thanks to all of you in the audience who joined us today and to thank you for your questions that greatly enriched our discussion so best wishes to everyone and we look forward to seeing you at a future USIP event thanks very much