Constitutional and legal status of military chaplains in Ukraine

Abstract

The realities of modern Ukraine are conditioned by the denial and reassessment of values inherited from the Soviet past, the search for new democratic ways of preserving and transmitting cultural experience, associated with the decline of previous ones and the simultaneous emergence of other, new European socio-cultural structures. The socio-cultural activity of social subjects regarding the creation of this new system of cultural values takes place against the background of complex and contradictory foreign and domestic political processes in the conditions of a large-scale war as a result of the military aggression of the Russian Federation on February 24, 2022, and as a result of fundamental changes in state-church relations.The topicality of the topic is due to the fact that one of the key issues of military-religious relations in Ukraine is the introduction of the institute of military clergy in the Armed Forces of Ukraine (hereinafter – the Armed Forces). Considering the high level of religiosity of the population in Ukraine in general and in the Armed Forces in particular, the need to have military chaplains in the army to ensure the satisfaction of the religious needs of servicemen is becoming urgent.In order to achieve the specified goal, the article: researched the conceptual and categorical apparatus and clarified the concept of freedom of worldview and religion, the functional duties of the military chaplaincy in Ukraine are defined, the state of formation of the regulatory framework regarding the activities of military chaplains in the conditions of martial law was characterized and proposals for its improvement were developed.