They are criminal - the All-Ukrainian Council of Churches on "elections" in Russia

On March 15-17, 2024, a farce took place in Russia, a farce that was called "bureaucratic procedure" or "electoral measures" even by those involved in the leadership of that country.

Conducting "elections" under such conditions and in the manner in which they were held renders them null and void, and the person who self-appointed himself to be the winner of this type of competition is absolutely illegitimate.

However, we are obliged to emphasize that these pseudo-elections are not just worthless and illegitimate. They are criminal. They are stained by the blood of innocent people, sins of murder, deceptions of lies, and common thievery.

On territories that were stolen from Ukraine the enemy dragged people to the “elections” – those territories will be never recognized by the civilized world as Russian. Those territories will definitely be returned to their rightful owner - the Ukrainian people.

That crime will never be covered by any "electoral event" and will not have a statute of limitations. By its baseness, it will stand in one line with Hitler's plebiscites. Shameful footage of Russian propaganda about the "happy residents" of the occupied territories, whose relatives and loved ones were murdered by the invaders who destroyed their homes, destroyed what made up their world is an absolute copy of the Hitler newsreels about "grateful peasants" who were forced into slave labor more than 80 years ago.

We call upon the world to remember who was appointed to be the winner of these "elections" long before those “elections” started. It is the person reasonably suspected of serious crimes, it is for him has been issued an arrest warrant of the International Criminal Court.

Remeber that among the victims of the regime led by him are our and your fellow believers, Christians, Muslims, Jews; clergymen and ordinary people of living faith; those who suffered solely for their religious beliefs and those who did not want to put up with evil.

We call on our brothers and sisters around the world to appeal to their Governments to unconditionally condemn the Russian regime. Do not be neutral to the regime which seeks to break the peace of the whole world and is a threat to all humanity.