Yelensky: U.S. officials tell us mobilizing priests is unacceptable
The head of DESS said Ukraine has been told by the United States and other countries that clergy must not be mobilized.
On June 3, 2026, Viktor Yelensky, head of Ukraine’s State Service for Ethnopolitics and Freedom of Conscience, said at a press conference presenting the nationwide survey “Assessment of the Religious Situation in Ukraine” that international religious centers have pointed out to Ukrainian authorities that mobilizing clergy is unacceptable.
Answering a question about the state’s refusal to exempt UOC clergy from mobilization, Yelensky noted that in the Orthodox and Catholic Churches a priest may offer only a bloodless sacrifice.
“He cannot take up arms. If he commits even an unintentional killing, he must be deposed from the priesthood,” the DESS head stressed.
“Many religious centers – for example, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, and many international religious centers – appealed and pointed this out to Ukraine. But ultimately, what was done, what was decided, was the decision of the Ukrainian president and the head of the Ukrainian government,” Yelensky said.
Yelensky did not specify what exactly Zelensky had decided in the context of the inadmissibility of mobilizing clergy.
He also said that chaplains of the Armed Forces of Ukraine periodically travel abroad to provide pastoral care for Ukrainian refugees.
Earlier, the UOJ reported that DESS intends to file lawsuits against every UOC eparchy.
