Ukraine’s Parliament passed a bill on Tuesday creating a legal path to ban a Russian-aligned branch of the Orthodox church, furthering a long, post-Soviet split between two of the world’s largest Orthodox communities.

Ukrainian officials have accused the church of aiding in influence operations and espionage during the country’s war with Russia.

The schism between the two churches has been a backdrop to the war. Orthodox Christianity is the most prevalent religion in both Russia and Ukraine, and until the Soviet breakup both belonged to the same hierarchy, under the patriarch in Moscow. The Orthodox Church of Ukraine broke from the Russian church more than 30 years ago, and answers to a prelate in Kyiv, but many parishes in Ukraine opted to remain aligned with the Russian church.

The lingering presence of the Russian-aligned branch of the church has posed a tangle of national security and religious freedom issues for Ukraine’s government as some of its priests have supported the Russian invasion. The government in Kyiv has shifted some holy sites to Ukrainian church control, and hundreds of local parishes have switched allegiances.

The bill passed on Tuesday though, would go a step farther.

If signed into law by President Volodymyr Zelensky, it could lead to a legal ban on the Russian-aligned church. The bill prohibits a religious organization from maintaining ties with a government at war with Ukraine, and singles out the Russian Orthodox Church for supporting the invasion and being “an accomplice in war crimes and crimes against humanity.” It would also establish a committee to determine whether local churches are violating Ukrainian law by maintaining ties with the Moscow patriarchate.

Mr. Zelensky is Jewish and not a member of any branch of Orthodoxy. But he has been supportive of national security controls on the Russian church’s activities and is expected to sign the bill.