President Zelensky, Religion, and the War
Dmytro Vovk
Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law
Date: Tuesday, March 31, 2026
Time: 12 - 1pm
Location: Boisi Center, 24 Quincy Road, Conference Room
The relations between the Ukrainian state and religion have always been heavily personalized. Since independence, they have been determined not so much by constitutional protections or legal regulations and procedures but more by religions’ political connections and their ability to transform these connections into benefits and advantages on Ukraine’s highly competitive religious market. This has made personal religious attitudes and preferences possessed by key political actors, and, first of all, by the Ukrainian President, extremely important for the model of the country’s religion-state relations.
Volodymyr Zelensky’s presidency is not an exception from this personalized pattern and, at the same time, is unique in terms of the core ideas behind his approach to religion. Since his election in 2019, Zelensky seems to have made an impressive religio-political journey from no religious agenda to the heavy involvement in inter-Orthodox relations since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion.
In his lecture, Dmytro Vovk will explain why and to what extent Zelensky's personal and political approach to religion and religions has changed and what it means for the Ukrainian model of religion-state relations.
Dmytro Vovk is a visiting professor at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law and the New York School of Law where he teaches constitutional law, international human rights, and law and religion. Vovk has been a rule of law, constitutional law, and religious freedom expert for several international institutions. In 2019–2025, Vovk was a member of the OSCE/ODIHR Expert Panel on Freedom of Religion or Belief. He also testified before the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom and briefed the U.S. State Department. He has published extensively on religious freedom and church-state relations in post-Soviet countries and beyond. Among his recent publications are the volume Human Dignity, Judicial Reasoning and the Law (Routledge 2024); the volume “Freedom of religion and gender equality across the OSCE region” for the Review of Faith and International Affairs (2022); and the volume Religion During the Russian-Ukrainian Conflict (Routledge 2019). Vovk edits the BYU Law International Center for Law and Religion Studies blog “Talk About: Law and Religion blog.”