Yuriy Chornomorets

Yurii Chornomorets

Date of birth: 04/26/1974

Scholar of religion, member of the DESS expert council, professor at the Department of Theology and Religious Studies of the National Pedagogical Dragomanov University.

Yurii Chornomorets belongs to a group of Ukrainian scholars of religion who actively use hate rhetoric against the faithful and clergy of the UOC.

Using his status as a scholar of religion, Chornomorets disseminated false information about Orthodox Christians. Moreover, he publicly called for extrajudicial reprisals and repressions against the UOC.

Chornomorets also took part in DESS work aimed at the de facto destruction of the UOC.

December 23, 2018 – Chornomorets stated that the UOC should serve only in private apartments.

The scholar of religion believed that “the UOC should have been given two months not for renaming, but for joining the newly created church structure”. All those unwilling to move to the OCU should serve in private facilities.

“In general, I believe it was not necessary to adopt a law that the ROC in Ukraine (UOC – Ed.) should be called the ROC in Ukraine – it was necessary to adopt a law that the Ukrainian state, as of 01/06/2019, respects the canons of the Orthodox Church, which require that there be only one canonical church in Ukraine. Since it is now clear which Church is canonical, the ROC in Ukraine should be given two months not to rename itself and its subdivisions, but to join the canonical Church, either at the Council as a whole or by each community separately. And in the case of non-joining, all ‘non-canonical communities’ should be deregistered, allowing them to serve exclusively in their own private homes,” Chornomorets stated.

(Source: UOJ)

July 9, 2020 – Chornomorets opposed the construction of the Holy Trinity church of the UOC in Kyiv because of architecture that reminded him of “Mother Russia”.

According to him, “when the outlines of the church being rebuilt at Novynskyi’s initiative together with the spiritual educational center were already clearly emerging, then I had only one question: who approved this purely Russian church-‘terem’?”

Chornomorets wondered: “How will this fit into the surrounding context in any way? How can this even be in practically the center of Ukraine? I was simply surprised and still in shock, to be honest.”

“We will see how it will all be done, in what colors, and so on, but so far, when everything has been built but has not yet been painted, purely visually – it is simply Mother Russia…,” Chornomorets noted.

At the same time, Yurii Chornomorets wrote that “my father, Mykola Radetskyi, was the last rector of the Trinity Church before it was destroyed overnight by Khrushchev’s order”.

At the same time, the church in honor of the Holy Trinity is being restored precisely in accordance with its pre-revolutionary architecture:

“In the center of Kyiv, a cathedral in honor of the Holy Trinity is being built. This church is being built on Velyka Vasylkivska Street on the site of a destroyed church that began to be built at the beginning of the 20th century. It could not be completed because of military and revolutionary events, and it was destroyed even before the war. The church is being built according to the same project, but with consideration of our current realities,” said the rector of the church, Archpriest Kostiantyn Kurbanov.

(Source: UOJ)

November 25, 2022 – Chornomorets publicly incited hatred against UOC clergy and spread false information.

The scholar of religion claimed that the UOC allegedly “has been waging a systematic information war against Ukraine.” Moreover, Chornomorets asserted that UOC bishops allegedly have “Russian citizenship,” and that Metropolitan Onufriy of Kyiv and All Ukraine allegedly has “a service record in intelligence.”

“The UOC–MP has been waging a systematic information war against Ukraine since September 2014. Even Solovyov managed to be among the Moscow curators of the information policy of the Kyiv Metropolis. We are waiting further – there is no point for the UOC to send peaceful letters to the primates of the Local Churches and truly leave the ROC. A citizen of the Russian Federation was responsible for relations with the Local Churches in the UOC! I am sure that almost all UOC bishops have such citizenship or there is simply a service record in Russian intelligence, like Onufriy,” Chornomorets wrote.

(Source: Chornomorets’s Facebook page)

January 2023 – DESS engaged Chornomorets to participate in conducting a “religious studies expert review” of the Charter on the Governance of the UOC.

At the meeting on January 10, 2023, the head of the Legal Department of the Kyiv Metropolis of the UOC, Archpriest Oleksandr Bakhov, took part. The lawyer expressed distrust toward a number of experts, including Chornomorets.

The clergyman stated:

“He clearly demonstrates his attitude toward the UOC on his personal Facebook page, for example, a post dated December 17, 2022, where Yurii Pavlovych directly calls the Ukrainian Orthodox Church by the propaganda label ‘UOC FSB’, calls for deporting the entire episcopate and destroying the structure itself. He also speaks about the UOC in an interview with Radio NV dated December 2, 2022, calling for dissolving UOC institutions by a decision of the NSDC, and calling it a rudiment of the Soviet Union. In his Facebook post of November 28, 2022, he calls the defense of the leadership of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church actions equivalent to denying the Holodomor or the Holocaust.”

(Source: Information and Educational Department of the UOC)

December 16, 2024 – Chornomorets called for harsh repressions against the UOC, deportations, and extrajudicial reprisals.

“…How long are we going to fuss with them, observe some European norms, and solve all this through the courts,” he complained in particular.

The scholar of religion voiced his criminal proposals and (effectively) calls to the Ukrainian authorities during a broadcast on “Radio NV”.

In Chornomorets’s view, “the state has not a single authority among the priests of the Moscow Patriarchate in Ukraine” because UOC clergy do not see punishments from the authorities (is that really about our priests?)

“These people have been preaching against the state of Ukraine for decades, they stand for some kind of all-Russian caliphate. So why are they still here?”

(Source: Radio NV)

May 29, 2025 – In a social media dispute with the head of the UOC Synodal Department “Church and Culture,” Abbess Seraphima (Shevchyk), Chornomorets descended to the use of profanity.

Deacon Andrii Hlushchenko of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church drew attention to the exchange, publishing screenshots on his Facebook page.

Addressing Abbess Seraphima, Chornomorets called the UOC clergy and faithful a “gang,” “btches,” and “whres.”

“Patients of a madhouse and supporters of a totalitarian sect – one. B*tches and wh*res who sold themselves for the money of orcs – two. I am not the state. I wouldn’t stand on ceremony with you, b*tches,” Chornomorets wrote, among other abuse, in response to Abbess Seraphima’s comment that the UOC is holding firm during the authorities’ persecutions of the Church.

July 2, 2025 – Chornomorets stated that being a parishioner of the UOC is “immoral” and “comparable to cannibalism”.

“One way or another – being in the UOC is immoral, it is like being a cannibal, and against the background of the UOC the hooligan OCU is quite a space of normality. To be in the UOC is to be in unity with Putin and Gundiaev, the authors of the theories and practices of rascism (Russian+fascism – Ed.); in everything they are Hitler and Goebbels today. I am surprised by everyone who is still in the UOC FSB,” Chornomorets wrote.

(Source: Chornomorets’s Facebook page)