On February 13, 2014, the Crimean Exarchate of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (UGCC) was established, with its seat in Simferopol. The exarchate covers the territory of the temporarily occupied Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol. The administrator of the Crimean Exarchate of the UGCC is the Most Reverend Bishop Mykhailo Bubniy, the Exarch of Odesa.

The first UGCC community in Crimea is considered to be the Parish of the Dormition of the Holy Mother of God in Sevastopol, which was officially registered in August 1991 at the initiative of Bohdana Protsak, the head of the Sevastopol city branch of the Ukrainian Women’s Union. Initially, religious services were held in rented premises until January 2001, when a UGCC church officially opened at the 10th kilometer of the Balaklava Highway.

The community was part of the Kyiv-Vyshhorod Exarchate of the UGCC, along with the parish in Yalta, registered on April 24, 1992, and the parish in Simferopol, registered on May 19, 1992. In the following years, additional parishes emerged in Kerch, Yevpatoriia, Alushta, and Dzhankoi, as well as in several villages and towns across the Crimean Peninsula.

In 2001, the Synod of Bishops of the UGCC decided to establish the Odesa-Crimean Exarchate, which Pope John Paul II approved in 2003. The newly formed exarchate encompassed Odesa, Mykolaiv, Kherson, Kirovohrad regions, the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, and the city of Sevastopol.

On June 13, 2011, the first UGCC church in Crimea, built according to canonical requirements, was consecrated in Vidradne, Yalta district, and dedicated to the Holy Trinity. On December 8, 2012, during a pilgrimage, Odesa-Crimean Exarch Vasyl Ivasyuk granted the church the status of a pilgrimage center with his episcopal blessing.

On February 13, 2014, by decision of the Synod of Bishops of the UGCC and with the blessing of the Vatican, the Crimean Exarchate was officially established, with its seat in Simferopol.

However, following Russia’s occupation of Crimea in February 2014, the situation for the Crimean Exarchate deteriorated dramatically. Almost all UGCC clergy and a significant portion of the faithful were forced to leave Crimea due to administrative, judicial, and extrajudicial pressure, as well as persecution by the Russian occupation administration.

For example, the Chaplain of the Ukrainian Naval Forces and pastor of the Sevastopol UGCC parish, Mykola Kvych, was forced to flee Crimea after being abducted by the occupiers on March 15, 2014. He was held and tortured for 12 hours while his captors threatened him with 15 years in a Russian prison.

Repression against UGCC parishes in Crimea has persisted over the years. In 2016, the occupation administration stripped the Yevpatoriia UGCC community of the premises used as a chapel. In the spring of 2019, the Sevastopol parish was illegally fined for failing to display a sign with the full name of the religious organization on the church building. In October 2020, for a similar “violation,” an occupation “court” imposed a fine of 30,000 rubles on the UGCC community in Yalta.

Today, UGCC religious communities in temporarily occupied Crimea continue to face administrative and judicial persecution by the occupation administration, who persist in suppressing religious freedom and eradicating Ukrainian spiritual and cultural identity on the peninsula