Instead, some churches in the Chernivtsi region hide their ties to the aggressor country. Since the last update at the end of 2022, the Register of Churches of the Moscow Patriarchate has changed. Opendatabot, a platform for working with open data, reports this, citing its analysis of the Unified State Register.

In 2023, 63 more Ukrainian religious organizations became affiliated with the Orthodox Church of Ukraine. 214 religious communities moved to the Orthodox Church of Ukraine from the beginning of the full-scale invasion until the end of 2022.

Almost a third of the churches that changed their affiliation are located in Kyiv region – 20 churches. Vinnytsia and Khmelnytskyi regions are also in the top 3, with 10 religious institutions each that have moved to the Orthodox Church of Ukraine since the beginning of the year.

However, to conceal their ties to the Russian Federation, some religious organizations of the Moscow Patriarchate have changed their names to the previous ones, contrary to the law, and have changed by themselves. All of these religious communities are located in the Chernivtsi region.

Overall, 8,505 churches in Ukraine are currently subordinate to the Moscow Patriarchate. The regions with the largest number of Moscow Patriarchate churches have not changed since the end of 2022. Donetsk (683 religious institutions), Khmelnytskyi (613), and Vinnytsia (563) regions.

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