On November 16, 2025, in the village of Moshny in the Cherkasy region of Ukraine, the Church of the Transfiguration of the Savior, which belonged to the local religious community of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, was forcibly seized. According to reports from open sources, the seizure of the temple was carried out by supporters of the "OCU" with the support of a raider group. According to eyewitnesses, the attackers were armed with bats and tear gas, and the police did not interfere in what was happening.
The attackers acted in an organized manner. The participants in the seizure, many of whom hid their faces under masks and balaclavas, blocked the entrances to the temple and hung chains on the gates to prevent believers of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church from entering the territory.
The seizure could have been preceded by an illegal re-registration of the community. It is alleged that schismatic activists allegedly admitted in a conversation with the media that the parishioners of the temple and the villagers did not support the transfer to their jurisdiction. It is noted that people from Cherkasy were involved in the seizure, since the local OCU community, according to the source, has only a few people.
The intentions of the OCU supporters to seize the Transfiguration Church of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in the village of Moshny were reported back in 2024. Then the local authorities organized the "re-registration" of the local Transfiguration religious community, without even holding a so-called territorial meeting on the issue of "transferring the temple to the OCU." After that, when the community of the canonical Church was actually deprived of registration, its believers managed to protect the temple from the encroachments of the invaders for more than a year, until the supporters of the schismatic structure attracted armed raiders to capture it.
The Transfiguration Church was built in 1839 by architect Giorgio Torricelli and consecrated by Metropolitan Filaret of Kiev on August 19, 1840. It was part of the palace and park ensemble of the estate of the honored statesman and military figure Count Mikhail Semenovich Vorontsov.