Talk:Ukraineの英語

Religious adherence poll based on CIA factbook is very misleading and needs to be removed or balanced with alternative polls and statistics. The biggest problem is the religious split between two largest Ukrainian Orthodox Churches - Ukrainian Orthodox Curch-Moscow Patriarchate (UOC-MP) and Ukrainian Orthodox Church-Kiev Patriarchate (UOC-KP). Razumkov Centre provides the following statistics : 10.9 % of Ukrainians identify themselves with UOC-MP, 14.9 % of Ukrainains identify themselves with UOC-KP while 62.5 % of Ukrainians do not identify themselves with any church organization mentioned in the poll, ["What religious group do you belong to?". Sociology poll by Razumkov Centre about the religious situation in Ukraine (2006)]. This poll, however, is also misleading. Majority of these 62.5 % of Ukrainians who were not able to identify themselves with a particular church organization, consider themselves Orthodox Christians (even if they only attend church services few times a year or not at all). Majority of this 62.5 % of Ukrainians were also baptized in UOC-MP churches and attend church services (even if only during Easter mess) in UOC-MP churches. This is simply because great majority of Ukrainian Orthodox churches and clergy belong to UOC-MP (approximately 68 percent of all Orthodox Christian communities in the country - see Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate)). The trick that allows UOC-KP to make claim to be the largest church in Ukraine is that the majority of their adherents clearly indicate they belong to UOC-KP (which is generally more nationalist and politicized), while most people who were baptized by UOC-MP and attend UOC-MP church services simply state they are Orthodox Christians. UOC-MP also often portrays itself as the canonical Orthodox Christian church in Ukraine rather than the "Moscow church", downplaying its connections with Moscow Patriarchate (esp. in Central and Western Ukraine) and this also contributes to the confusion polls on church allegiance in Ukraine create. In addition, many of the UOC-MP churches and majority of people who identify with UOC-MP are in the more urbanized South and East Ukraine where church attendance is low compared to the rural Central and Western Ukraine where UOC-KP is the strongest. If the pollsters would have used a different methodology that would explained the differences between the two churches and really press the Ukrainians to choose between the two more than 50 % of Ukrainians would likely identify with UOC-MP while only around 15 % with UOC-KP, yet the CIA Factbook statistics paint the picture which is almost the exact opposite. The religious divide in Ukraine is not exactly the same as a linguistic, political, cultural and historical divide in Ukraine between Russian-speaking south-east(majority of Yanukovych voters in the second round of the recent presidential poll) and Ukrainian speaking north-west (mostly Tymoshenko voters), there is an Orthodox Christian majority in the North and Central Ukraine and a sizable Orthodox minority (including the UOC-MP laity) in the West, yet there is a relation to the overall split which divides Ukraine in two. Roughly 55 to 60 % of more or less religious Ukrainians identify with UOC-MP (or the canonical Orthodox Ukrainian church as many know it) while the rest are members of UOC-KP church, Greko-Catholic church, Roman Catholic church, various Protestant churches and so on.