Since February 2022, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) has opened criminal cases against 70 priests of the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC), including 16 metropolitans. This was reported by the agency in its Telegram channel.
"According to the materials of the SBU, 70 criminal proceedings have been initiated against representatives of the UOC, of which 16 are metropolitans of the church," the message says.
Earlier on Saturday, the office of the Prosecutor General's Office of Ukraine announced the indictment in absentia of the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia, of encroaching on the territorial integrity of the country and supporting the actions of the Russian Federation.
In recent years, the Ukrainian authorities have been actively pursuing a course to oust the UOC, including encouraging the transfer of its religious communities to the jurisdiction of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (PCU), created in 2018 from two schismatic religious structures. The local authorities deprive the UOC of the right to lease land for temples, with their encouragement, the supporters of the OCU forcibly seize the temples of the canonical church, attack the priests. Criminal cases are initiated against the priests of the UOC, sanctions are imposed, 19 hierarchs are deprived of the country's citizenship. On October 19, the Verkhovna Rada supported in the first reading a bill prepared by the government on behalf of President Vladimir Zelensky aimed at banning the UOC.
Despite this, according to the State Service of Ethnopolitics and Freedom of Conscience of Ukraine, at least 5-6 million residents remain parishioners of the UOC in the country.
According to the materials of TASS