On April 4, 2025, the delegation of the Ukrainian Council of Churches and Religious Organizations (UCCRO) met in Prague with the Head of the Article 18 Alliance – IRFBA (International Religious Freedom and Belief Alliance), Ambassador-at-Large for Holocaust Issues, Interfaith Dialogue and Religious Freedom at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic, Robert Řehák. The meeting took place at the building of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic.

Before the meeting, Ambassador Řehák gave the UCCRO delegation a tour of the ministry's premises. During the meeting, the Head of the Alliance informed the Ukrainian religious leaders about the work of the International Alliance and the upcoming Ministerial Conference on International Religious Freedom, which is scheduled to take place in Prague in the fall of 2025.

The UCCRO delegation expressed its gratitude to Ambassador Řehák for the Alliance’s consistent attention to and response regarding religious persecution committed by Russia in the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine. The representatives of the Council of Churches cited examples of religious repression in the territories occupied by Russia, and shared information about the state of religious freedom as well as the spiritual and humanitarian activities of Ukrainian churches during the ongoing Russian-Ukrainian war.

During the meeting, the Ukrainian religious leaders emphasized the threat posed by the spread of the “Russian World” (Russkiy mir) ideology and the hybrid activities of representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church in the Czech Republic and across the European Union.

At the end of the meeting, the representatives of the Council of Churches offered a prayer for Ukraine and the Czech Republic, for victory, and for a just peace for Ukraine. This meeting concluded the UCCRO delegation’s visit to Prague.

It is worth recalling that from April 2 to 4, 2025, the delegation of the Ukrainian Council of Churches and Religious Organizations, led by the Chairman of the Council, Bishop Valerii Antoniuk of the All-Ukrainian Union of Churches of Evangelical Christians-Baptists, visited Prague (Czech Republic). The delegation included representatives of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, the Roman Catholic Church in Ukraine, the Ukrainian Pentecostal Church, the Ukrainian Evangelical Church, the Association of Jewish Religious Organizations of Ukraine, the Spiritual Administration of Muslims of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, the Ukrainian Bible Society, and the Institute for Religious Freedom.