The Supreme Court has put an end to the case involving former Metropolitan Joseph of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate)
On July 31, the Grand Chamber of the Supreme Court concluded its review of the “sanctions” case involving the former Metropolitan of Romny and Buryn of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate, Joseph (Alexei Maslennikov). The legal dispute concerned an appeal against decisions made after sanctions were imposed on the church leader.
Since the summer of 2023, the clergyman’s lawsuit had been pending before the Supreme Court and subsequently before the Grand Chamber of that same court. His attorney sought to overturn two decrees issued by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on December 1, 2022, and January 24, 2023, which imposed personal sanctions by the National Security and Defense Council against Metropolitan Joseph. According to official documents, 14 types of sanctions have been imposed on Alexei Maslennikov for a period of five years.
The hierarch’s defense attorney argued in court that his client does not fall under the category of entities subject to restrictive measures (according to the sanctions law, there are six categories of persons to whom sanctions may be applied: foreign states; foreign legal entities; legal entities controlled by a foreign legal entity or a non-resident individual; foreigners; stateless persons; and entities engaged in terrorist activities).
At the same time, in court, representatives of the Security Service of Ukraine—who had initiated the imposition of sanctions against Metropolitan Joseph before the National Security and Defense Council— cited in their arguments the conclusion of a religious studies expert analysis of the UOC’s Statute on Governance, which confirmed its ecclesiastical-canonical ties to the Russian Orthodox Church. In addition, law enforcement officials emphasized that Maslennikov is suspected of justifying the Russian Federation’s armed aggression against Ukraine and inciting religious hostility, and has been placed on the wanted list (it is preliminarily known that the hierarch remained in Russia).
The case file includes a reference to a YouTube video that has undergone the relevant forensic linguistic analysis. The video depicts a Divine Liturgy that took place at the St. Nicholas Monastery (in Verkhoturye, Sverdlovsk Oblast, Russian Federation) on September 25, 2022. Present at that service was the then-Metropolitan Joseph of Romny and Buryn of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate, who offered a prayer for the Russian government and army: “May we preserve our Russian state, its authorities, its military, and its people.”
In turn, the Grand Chamber of the Supreme Court, which reviewed the lower court’s decision in the case of Metropolitan Joseph, emphasized: in the event of armed aggression, the victim state has not only the right but also the duty to its citizens to take all necessary measures to protect national security, the lives and health of the population, territorial integrity, and sovereignty. The use of sanctions as a preventive economic tool to protect against threats to national security is a legitimate measure that does not contradict international law. On the contrary, the court finds that such measures are consistent with the spirit and letter of the UN Charter, which establishes the right of states to individual and collective self-defense.
“The imposition of sanctions on individuals with ties to the Russian Federation, its institutions, or individuals—even if those individuals are not formally Russian citizens—is a justified and necessary measure to protect Ukraine’s national security. Specifying the purpose of imposing sanctions on the plaintiff (Oleksiy Maslennikov – “Glavkom”), it can be concluded that it lies precisely in preventing the risk of using religious authority and the associated material and social resources to spread narratives consistent with ideological support for the aggressor, which, under martial law, poses a real threat to social cohesion and the state’s information security,” states the ruling of the Grand Chamber of the Supreme Court.
Separately, the court explained that the state’s imposition of sanctions against Metropolitan Joseph is not a punishment for a committed crime (justifying the Russian Federation’s armed aggression against Ukraine and inciting religious hostility; no verdict has yet been handed down in this case). Rather, it is “exclusively preventive in nature—restricting the ability to use economic resources and property for activities that may indirectly contribute to or fail to counter threats to national security in a state of war.”
As a result, the Grand Chamber of the Supreme Court upheld the Supreme Court’s decision of May 19, 2025, in the case of Oleksiy Maslennikov v. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The court’s ruling takes effect on the date of its adoption and is not subject to appeal, according to “Glavkom.”
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