“Liberation from the devils of Moscow”: securitising the Ukrainian Orthodox Church after Russia’s full-scale invasion

Following Russia’s full-scale invasion, Ukrainian authorities argued that the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC), historically subordinated to the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC), posed a threat to Ukraine’s national and “spiritual” security and adopted policies to counter this threat that received strong domestic support but significant international criticism. This article analyzes these policies and the debates surrounding them through the lens of the Copenhagen School's securitisation theory. It challenges the universal applicability of the Copenhagen School's desecuritization recommendation and proposes three criteria for assessing the justifiability of securitisation: Does a security threat to the “referent object” exist independently of the securitising discourse itself? Are there robust safeguards against overreach by “securitizing” state actors? How likely is it that securitisation would enhance security, democracy, and social unity? The analysis finds that the first two criteria are largely met in the Ukrainian case, while the likely consequences of state-favoured securitising policies are more ambiguous.