Ukraine is majority Orthodox Christian, with most estimates including Pew Research's Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020 placing Orthodox adherents at around two-thirds of the population, split between the newly independent Orthodox Church of Ukraine, recognized by the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople in 2019, and the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, historically under the Moscow Patriarchate though it declared greater independence after Russia's 2022 invasion, alongside a significant Greek Catholic minority concentrated in western Ukraine and smaller Roman Catholic, Protestant and Jewish communities.
Kyiv, not Moscow, was the original seat of Rus Orthodox Christianity following Prince Vladimir's 988 CE conversion, a shared origin both Russian and Ukrainian national narratives claim as foundational, and the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, which retains Eastern Orthodox liturgy and married clergy while recognizing papal authority, emerged from the 1596 Union of Brest and has served historically as a marker of western Ukrainian and Galician identity distinct from the Russian-oriented east. Ukraine's prewar Jewish population, once one of the largest in Europe and the birthplace of Hasidism, particularly around Uman and Medzhybizh, was devastated by the Holocaust and earlier pogroms, though Ukraine elected a Jewish president, Volodymyr Zelensky, in 2019.