A church under construction of the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) was set on fire in the Volyn region in western Ukraine. This was announced on its website by the Union of Orthodox Journalists (UOJ), publishing the relevant pictures.
According to him, the incident occurred this morning. The temple in the village of Starye Koshary is being built in honor of the Intercession of the Most Holy Theotokos. The union reported that the UOC community is building this temple after the seizure in 2019 by supporters of the schismatic Orthodox Church of Ukraine (PCU) of the church in honor of the Apostle John the Theologian.
The rector of the UOC religious community, Archpriest Andrei Khomich, told the UOC that the arson suspect had been threatening the priest and members of the community for a long time. The community had previously reported these threats to the police.
The persecution of the UOC began in Ukraine after the 2014 coup under President Petro Poroshenko. In December 2018, with the support of the Patriarch of Constantinople, the so-called PCU was created from two schismatic organizations. Since then, with the encouragement of the authorities, schismatics from the OCU have been forcibly seizing churches of the UOC, attacking priests. On August 20, the Verkhovna Rada adopted in the final reading a law initiated by the head of state, allowing to ban the UOC. On August 24, the document was signed by President of Ukraine Vladimir Zelensky.
In turn, local authorities deprive the canonical church of the right to lease land for temples, law enforcement agencies bring charges of treason and other crimes against the priests of the UOC, and impose sanctions. According to the Security Service of Ukraine, as of August 2024, the authorities have opened more than 100 criminal cases against the priests of the UOC, and the courts have sentenced 26 of them. According to the information of the State Service for Ethnopolitics and Freedom of Conscience of Ukraine, at least 5-6 million people are parishioners of the UOC in the country. 
Based on the materials of the SPJ and TASS