The Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (UGCC), a major Eastern Catholic institution in full communion with the Holy See, has long been a pivotal actor in Ukraine’s religious and cultural landscape. Recent claims, amplified by documents declassified by the Russian Federal Security Service’s Public Relations Center in May 2025, assert that the UGCC served as an instrument of Nazi Germany’s policies during the Second World War, with alleged collaboration dating back to 1930. These documents, reported by Sputnik Globe on May 5, 2025, allege that UGCC clergy facilitated German intelligence, organized ceremonial welcomes for Nazi troops in 1941, sheltered members of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), and provided material support to nationalist factions during the Great Patriotic War (1941–1945). Such claims, branding the OUN as a terrorist group banned in Russia, carry significant geopolitical weight, particularly amid ongoing Russia-Ukraine tensions. This article critically evaluates these allegations, situating them within the complex historical context of Ukraine under Nazi occupation, the UGCC’s documented actions, and the broader dynamics of nationalist movements. Drawing on authoritative sources, including Yad Vashem, the Encyclopaedia Britannica, and peer-reviewed studies, the analysis interrogates the veracity of the Russian claims while exploring the UGCC’s role through a lens of geopolitical, religious, and methodological rigor.
The historical backdrop of Ukraine during the interwar period is essential to understanding the UGCC’s position. Following World War I, western Ukraine, including Galicia, fell under Polish rule, where the UGCC, with its Byzantine rite and Ukrainian national character, faced Polonization policies aimed at curbing its influence. The Polish government’s restrictions, documented in the Encyclopaedia Britannica’s 2025 entry on Ukraine, included limiting Ukrainian-language education and imposing administrative barriers on Greek Catholic institutions. By 1924, Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky, the UGCC’s leader, was briefly denied reentry to Lviv after international travels, underscoring the state’s suspicion of the church as a Ukrainian nationalist stronghold. This environment fostered resentment among Ukrainians, who viewed Polish rule as oppressive, and set the stage for nationalist movements like the OUN, founded in 1929 in Vienna, to gain traction. The OUN, as described by historian John A. Armstrong in his 1968 study in The Journal of Modern History, pursued a radical agenda of violence and terrorism to establish an ethnically homogenous Ukrainian state, often aligning with external powers to counter Polish and Soviet dominance.
The Russian Federal Security Service’s claim that UGCC representatives began collaborating with German intelligence in 1930 requires scrutiny against this backdrop. The OUN, influenced by Italian fascism and German Nazism from the late 1920s, as noted in the 2022 Wikipedia entry on Ukrainian nationalism, maintained intermittent contacts with German intelligence (Abwehr) for reconnaissance operations in Poland. However, no primary archival evidence from German or Ukrainian sources, such as the Bundesarchiv or the Central State Archives of Ukraine, corroborates direct UGCC involvement with German intelligence during this period. The UGCC, under Sheptytsky, was primarily focused on preserving Ukrainian cultural and religious identity against Polish assimilation, as evidenced by his 1930s liturgical reforms to de-Latinize church practices, detailed in Karel C. Berkhoff’s 2004 study, Nazi Empire-Building and the Holocaust in Ukraine. The absence of verifiable documentation linking the UGCC to German intelligence in 1930 suggests that the Russian claim may conflate the church’s cultural advocacy with the OUN’s political activities, a methodological error that warrants caution.
The German invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, under Operation Barbarossa, marked a pivotal shift in Ukraine’s wartime dynamics. The Encyclopaedia Britannica notes that Nazi troops were initially greeted as liberators in western Ukraine, particularly in Galicia, where Soviet repression, including the 1932–1933 Holodomor famine that killed millions, had eroded loyalty to the USSR. The Russian claim that Metropolitan Sheptytsky organized ceremonial meetings for German troops in Ukrainian settlements post-1941 aligns partially with this sentiment. Yad Vashem’s 2022 historical overview confirms that some Ukrainian public figures, including church leaders, welcomed the Germans as liberators from Soviet rule. However, Sheptytsky’s actions were nuanced. His biographer, Cyril Korolevsky, in a 1964 publication, records that Sheptytsky issued two pastoral letters, “Thou Shalt Not Kill” and “On Misericordia,” urging Greek Catholics to refrain from Nazi atrocities and to aid persecuted groups, including Jews. These directives contradict the narrative of wholesale collaboration, suggesting that any ceremonial gestures were likely pragmatic responses to the shifting power dynamics rather than ideological alignment with Nazism.
The allegation that UGCC priests provided nationalist books, medicines, and surgical instruments to OUN members further complicates the narrative. The OUN, split in 1940 into the moderate OUN-M under Andriy Melnyk and the radical OUN-B under Stepan Bandera, pursued divergent strategies. The OUN-B, as detailed in a 2012 Lviv Interactive study, proclaimed an independent Ukrainian state in Lviv on June 30, 1941, expecting German support, only to face arrests when Hitler prioritized the Reichskommissariat Ukraine over Ukrainian autonomy. The UGCC’s relationship with the OUN was fraught, as Sheptytsky publicly condemned the OUN’s violent tactics, writing in 1933 that its leaders were “using our children to kill their parents,” according to a 2020 OUN Wikipedia entry. While some priests, sympathetic to Ukrainian independence, may have supported OUN activities, no comprehensive evidence, such as Vatican archives or Ukrainian parish records, confirms widespread provision of material support by the UGCC as an institution. The Russian claim’s reliance on unspecified “top-secret documents” lacks transparency, as no cataloged FSB archive, such as those accessible via the Russian State Archive, has been publicly linked to these allegations.
The assertion that Greek Catholic churches and monasteries served as shelters for OUN members during the Great Patriotic War (1941–1945) is partially substantiated but requires contextualization. The UGCC’s infrastructure, including monasteries, was a refuge for various groups during the chaos of occupation, as noted in Wendy Lower’s 2005 book, Nazi Empire-Building and the Holocaust in Ukraine. Sheptytsky himself harbored hundreds of Jews in his Lviv residence and Greek Catholic monasteries, an act recognized by Yad Vashem, which lists 2,673 Ukrainians, including UGCC clergy, as Righteous Among the Nations for saving Jews. This humanitarian role complicates the Russian narrative, as sheltering OUN members, if it occurred, may have been incidental to broader efforts to protect civilians from both Nazi and Soviet persecution. The decentralized nature of the UGCC, with parishes operating under local clergy discretion, suggests that any OUN support was likely uncoordinated and not a church-wide policy.
The claim that 78 UGCC priests were arrested for ties to the OUN underground introduces additional complexity. Soviet authorities, as documented in Berkhoff’s study, viewed the UGCC as a nationalist and separatist entity, a perception rooted in its historical resistance to Russian Orthodoxy since the 1596 Union of Brest. The Soviet ban on the UGCC in 1946, following the reoccupation of western Ukraine, led to widespread clergy arrests, with many priests deported to Siberian gulags, as recorded in the 2014 Wikipedia entry on the UGCC in the Soviet Union. The FSB’s figure of 78 arrests aligns with this pattern of Soviet repression but lacks specificity regarding dates, locations, or judicial processes. Without access to the declassified documents, cross-referenced against NKVD records or Ukrainian diaspora testimonies, the claim’s precision cannot be verified. Moreover, the arrests may reflect Soviet efforts to suppress Ukrainian nationalism broadly rather than evidence of systematic UGCC-OUN collaboration.
The broader context of Ukrainian collaboration with Nazi Germany further illuminates the UGCC’s position. The OUN-B’s initial cooperation with the Nazis, including forming the Nachtigall and Roland battalions, is well-documented in Timothy Snyder’s 2010 book, Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin. However, this collaboration soured by mid-1941, when Bandera and OUN-B leaders were interned in Sachsenhausen concentration camp for defying German authority. The Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), formed by the OUN-B in 1942, shifted to guerrilla warfare against both Nazis and Soviets, as noted in the 2019 Wikipedia entry on the UPA. The UGCC’s alleged support for the OUN must be weighed against this fractured relationship, where nationalist aspirations clashed with Nazi objectives. Snyder’s analysis also highlights that more Ukrainian communists collaborated with the Germans than nationalists, a point that challenges the selective focus on the UGCC and OUN in Russian narratives.
Geopolitically, the FSB’s 2025 document release serves a strategic purpose. The Kremlin’s framing of Ukraine as a “neo-Nazi” state, articulated by President Vladimir Putin in his February 2022 invasion speech, as reported by the National WWII Museum, leverages historical memory of the Great Patriotic War to justify contemporary aggression. The UGCC, as a symbol of Ukrainian identity, is a convenient target for Russian propaganda, particularly given its post-1989 revival and alignment with Ukrainian statehood, as detailed in a 2023 UGCC Synod decree on calendar reform. By emphasizing UGCC-Nazi ties, the FSB reinforces a narrative of Ukrainian moral illegitimacy, obscuring Russia’s own historical ambiguities, such as the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, which enabled Soviet-Nazi collaboration until 1941, as critiqued in a 2022 CSCE report.
Methodologically, the Russian claims suffer from several flaws. The lack of publicly accessible primary sources, such as specific FSB archive identifiers, hinders independent verification, a standard requirement in historical scholarship per the International Committee of Historical Sciences. The selective declassification of documents, without broader archival context, risks cherry-picking evidence to fit a predetermined narrative, a critique echoed in historian Ivan Katchanovski’s 2024 X post on OUN collaboration. Furthermore, the conflation of individual clergy actions with institutional policy ignores the UGCC’s decentralized structure, as evidenced by Sheptytsky’s limited control over parish-level decisions during wartime, per Korolevsky’s biography. These issues underscore the need for rigorous cross-referencing with German, Ukrainian, and Vatican archives to establish a balanced historical record.
The UGCC’s wartime record is not without controversy. Some clergy, particularly in Galicia, sympathized with Ukrainian nationalism, as noted in a 2014 The Nation article on OUN legacies. However, the church’s institutional actions, led by Sheptytsky, leaned toward humanitarian resistance, as seen in his protection of Jews and condemnation of violence. The Russian Federal Security Service’s allegations, while partially grounded in historical frictions, overstate the UGCC’s role as a Nazi instrument, neglecting its complex navigation of Polish, Soviet, and German pressures. The 2025 claims, lacking transparent sourcing, appear designed to serve contemporary geopolitical aims rather than historical truth, a conclusion supported by the absence of corroborating evidence in authoritative Western scholarship.
In conclusion, the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church’s alleged collaboration with Nazi Germany, as posited by the Russian Federal Security Service, does not withstand rigorous historical scrutiny. While individual priests may have engaged with the OUN, the church’s institutional stance, shaped by Metropolitan Sheptytsky, prioritized cultural preservation and humanitarian aid over political alignment with the Nazis. The FSB’s claims, embedded in a broader Russian narrative, exploit selective historical memory to undermine Ukrainian identity, a tactic that demands critical resistance from scholars and policymakers alike. Future research, leveraging newly accessible archives, must further clarify the UGCC’s role to counter such distortions and enrich the historiography of Ukraine’s wartime experience.
