Andriy Yurash

Andrii Yurash

Date of birth: January 17, 1969

Former head of the now-abolished State Department for Religious Affairs and Nationalities within the Ministry of Culture of Ukraine; Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Ukraine to the Vatican (since 2021).

Andrii Yurash was appointed head of the State Department for Religious Affairs and Nationalities in 2014. From that moment on, the official became actively involved in a campaign of harassment and persecution of Orthodox Christians.

Using his official position within the relevant state body, Yurash covered up violations of the law. Moreover, he personally took part in actions described as crimes against the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC).

September 20, 2017 Yurash took part in a roundtable discussion dedicated to issues of freedom of religion in Ukraine.

During the event, the official denied violations of the rights of UOC believers and clergy, asserting that there was absolute religious freedom. Yurash remained silent about crimes committed against the UOC.

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(Video source)

November 21, 2017 Yurash stated that the statutes of UOC communities allegedly did not comply with Ukrainian legislation.

In this way, Yurash attempted to justify discriminatory practices in refusing to register UOC communities.

Moreover, during a press conference at Ukrinform, the official claimed that the raider seizure of a UOC church in the village of Hvozdets by UOC-KP activists was “conditioned by spiritual needs”.

(Source: Ukrinform)

June 2, 2019 On his Facebook page, Yurash compared members of the religious community of the St. Michael’s Church of the UOC in the village of Kruty, Chernihiv region, to “Muravyov’s hordes” and declared the need for new fighters against the “church imperial past” to appear in the village.

Yurash regarded the fact that believers prevented OCU raiders from seizing their church as yet another defeat in the historic Battle of Kruty.

(Source: UOJ)

June 6, 2019 Yurash publicly accused Metropolitan Varsonofiy of Bar and Vinnytsia of “strengthening a pro-Russian party” in Vinnytsia.

September 10, 2019 The State Bureau of Investigation opened a criminal case against Andrii Yurash, by then already a former director of the Ministry of Culture’s Department for Religious Affairs and Nationalities.

The former official was accused of official forgery.

The grounds for opening criminal proceedings were an expert opinion (“Religious Studies Conclusions”) issued by Yurash in 2017. According to law-enforcement sources, the document mentioned Archpriest Viktor Zemlianyi, head of the Department for the Settlement of Interconfessional Disputes of the Rivne Eparchy of the UOC.

“Based on Yurash’s ‘conclusions’, a criminal case was opened two years ago against the priest: he was served with a notice of suspicion under Article 161 of the Criminal Code (violation of equality of citizens based on religion)… It was precisely this document that formed the basis of the criminal case against Yurash himself, now being investigated by Kyiv’s Shevchenkivskyi District Police Department. The case states that ‘…an official of the Ministry of Culture of Ukraine, deliberately, with the aim of enabling the pre-trial investigation body to artificially create evidence of guilt, abused his official position contrary to the interests of the service, violated his direct duties, and, with the purpose of creating a negative image of the religious organization “Kyiv Metropolia of the UOC” by discrediting its leading clergy, compiled a document titled “Religious Studies Conclusions”, thereby causing harm to V. A. Zemlianyi’,” the publication states.

The forgery was uncovered in spring 2019, when the State Bureau of Investigation decided to examine the legality of the criminal prosecution of Archpriest Viktor Zemlianyi.

(Source: Orthodox Life)

October 13, 2019 The press secretary of the Vinnytsia Eparchy, Archpriest Volodymyr Puchkov, refuted Yurash’s claims related to an attempted OCU raider seizure of a UOC church.

The cleric reported that at a meeting of the Transfiguration parish in the village of Luka-Meleshkivska, Vinnytsia region, more than 300 parishioners reaffirmed their loyalty to the UOC.

Yurash, however, claimed that only 15 people allegedly voted at the meeting.

(Source: UOJ)

December 12, 2019 Yurash threatened to restrict the rights of UOC communities that refused to forcibly rename themselves as the “Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine”.

“They will not be able to carry out any legal actions. For example, change leadership or formalize property ownership… When a religious community wants to carry out any registration action, for instance changing an address, this can only be done on the basis of the organization’s statute. Since the law’s provisions have not been fulfilled and the statutes regarding naming have lost force, this cannot be done,” Yurash stated.

(Source: Livyi Bereh)

May 4, 2021 In an interview with DetectorUA, Yurash admitted that he had personally taken part in drafting and lobbying legislation that enabled raider seizures of UOC churches.

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December 12, 2022 In an interview with Radio NV, Yurash admitted that during his tenure as head of the State Department for Religious Affairs and Nationalities, the authorities had continuously planned and prepared a ban on the UOC.

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December 13, 2023 In an interview with Ukrainian Radio, Ukraine’s Ambassador to the Vatican Andrii Yurash stated that constant efforts were being made to convince Pope Francis that the UOC were “anti-Christians”, while at the same time claiming that no one in Ukraine was persecuting them.

In doing so, the Ukrainian ambassador deliberately misinformed the Pope about the alleged absence of persecution of the UOC.

(Source: Ukrainian Radio)

November 18, 2025 In the Vatican, Andrii Yurash lobbied the law banning the UOC with the Prefect of the Dicastery for the Eastern Churches of the Roman Catholic Church, Cardinal Claudio Gugerotti.