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Religion in Ukraine

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Through Christianity, Islam and Hinduism

Ten percent of Ukrainians identified as atheists. With Christianity in Ukraine overwhelmingly predominant, representative statistical samples of the population surveyed by KIIS in 2020, 2021, and 2022 reported 0% of respondents identifying with Judaism and Islam. An older survey by the Razumkov Center in 2018 estimated Jews in Ukraine at 0.4% of the population, with smaller 0.1% minorities following Hinduism, Buddhism and Paganism (Rodnovery). According to the surveys conducted by Razumkov in the 2000s and early 2010s, such proportions have remained relatively constant throughout the last decade, while the proportion of believers overall has decreased from 76% in 2014 to 70% in 2016 and 72% in 2018.

As of 2022, Christianity was particularly strong in westernmost Ukrainian regions, where most Greek Catholics lived. In central, southern and eastern regions, Christians constitute a smaller proportion of the total population, particularly low in the easternmost region of Donbas. Another religion that is present in Ukraine besides Christianity is Rodnovery (Slavic native faith), which comprises Ukrainian- and Russian-language communities (some Rodnover organizations call the religion Orthodoxy (Ukrainian: Правосла́в'я, romanized: Pravoslávʺya), thus functioning in homonymy with Christian Orthodox churches).

Crimean Tatars professing Islam represent a significant part of the population in Crimea, which prior to 2014 was a subject of Ukraine, but has been since that year occupied by Russia. As of 2016, without Crimea, where Muslims formed 15% of the population in 2013, only Donbas maintains a larger community of Muslims compared to other Ukrainian regions (6%).

Since before the outbreak of the war in Donbas in 2014, but even more violently so from that year onward, there has been unrest between pro-Ukrainian and pro-Russian religious groups in the country.

After the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy "signed a decree enacting a National Security and Defense Council decision to impose personal sanctions against representatives of religious organizations associated with Russia". Ukraine's government will specifically examine the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate and ban any activities relating to pro-Russian movement.

History

In pre-historic times and in the Early Middle Ages, the territories of present-day Ukraine supported different tribes practising their traditional pagan religions (though note for example the Tengrism of Old Great Bulgaria in present-day Ukraine in the 7th century. Byzantine Rite Christianity first became prominent about the turn of the first millennium. Later traditions and legends relate that in the first century CE the Apostle Andrew himself had visited the site where the city of Kyiv would later arise.

In the 10th century the emerging state of Kievan Rus' came increasingly under the cultural influence of the Byzantine Empire. The first recorded convert to Eastern Orthodoxy, Saint Olga, visited Constantinople in 945 or 957. In the 980s, according to tradition, Olga's grandson, Vladimir, had his people baptised in the Dnieper River.

This began a long history of the dominance of Eastern Orthodoxy in Ruthenia, a religious ascendancy that would later influence both Ukraine and Russia. Domination of Little Russia by Great Russia (from 1721) eventually led to the decline of Uniate Catholicism (officially founded in 1596 during Polish rule) in the Ukrainian lands under Tsarist control.

Judaism has existed in the territories of present-day Ukraine for approximately 2,000 years: Jewish traders appeared in Greek colonies. After the 7th century Judaism influenced the neighbouring Khazar Khaganate. From the 13th century Ashkenazi Jewish presence in Ukraine increased significantly. In the 18th century a new teaching of Judaism originated and became established in the Ukrainian lands – Hasidism.

The Golden Horde (which adopted Islam in 1313) and the Sunni Ottoman Empire (which conquered the Ukrainian littoral in the 1470s) brought Islam to their subject territories in present-day Ukraine. Crimean Tatars accepted Islam as the state religion (1313–1502) of the Golden Horde, and later ruled as vassals of the Ottoman Empire (until the late 18th century).

During the period of Soviet rule (c. 1917–1991) the governing Soviet authorities officially promoted atheism and taught it in schools, while promoting various levels of persecution of religious believers and of their organizations. Only a small fraction of people remained official church-goers in that period, and the number of non-believers increased.

The 20th century saw schisms within Eastern Orthodoxy in Ukrainian territory.

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