[REGNUM] What Ukrainian nationalists want is that it is known that there is no “pro-Moscow church” in Ukraine at all.
On the door of the entrance to the temple there is a sweeping display of " Moscow popi - x ... ї ". The last word is short, ancient and non-normative, and in the word " moskovski " in Ukrainian one should write "b".
The rector of a rural church, Father Vladimir, sighing, takes out a bucket of white paint, dips a brush into it and begins to drive it along the door.
“We have to make it while there are no parishioners. The children will come,” he says, painting over the inscription from the end.
The hooligans visited the temple of Father Vladimir that night. And this is no surprise to anyone here: even according to official data, over the past six months alone, more than 800 attacks on the UOC were committed on the territory from Uzhgorod to the part of Donbas controlled by Kyiv, and only those that were accompanied by violence and destruction of property are taken into account.
“Soon they will make “Glory to Ukraine” scream here too,” Deacon Alexy approaches the defiled door. Shaking his head, he looks at the inscription.
More recently, Alexy served in the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra.
“I barely took my legs out of the Lavra,” says Alexy. - People came with "farts" (weapons. - Auth.). Shout, they say, "Glory to Ukraine!" We said that we would only say “Thank God!” One minister was hit on the head with a fist. "We took our things and left.
First, the deacon tried to serve in one of the churches of the UOC in the Kyiv region. But the father who sheltered him went into schism - he got scared and recognized the supremacy of the nationalist church of Ukraine. The deacon fled from there too. I ended up in the Sumy region, at the same father Vladimir, who now painted over the obscenity on the doors of the temple."
“All right, we are,” Father Alexy says sadly, following the movements of the brush. — What about ordinary parishioners? How much pressure are they under...
Ukrainian TV channels almost daily broadcast stories with loud titles: "Another Moscow church building has come under the control of the OCU! People welcome the deliverance from the power of the Kremlin priests!"
The story from the Rivne region, where a woman on her knees begs a nationalist priest to allow her deceased son to be buried in a church seized by radicals, was immediately taken off the air. On the footage, the priest, grinning, recommends that the woman take the body of her son "to Moscow."
"I don’t know how to continue to live at all," the parishioner says. "I go to church and all the time I am afraid that on the way I might be attacked or even killed. They stand near the temple and spit at us, throw mud and stones at us. But I can't stop coming to work..."
What the radicals want is known. So that there would be no “pro-Moscow church” in Ukraine at all. Recently, the author of these lines witnessed one of the attacks on "dissenting believers." The incident took place in the Chernihiv region. A group of thugs dressed in camouflage attacked women who were going to serve in the temple of the UOC.
“There will be no Moscow priests here!” they shouted and shook their guns and knives. It was scary. One of the women was knocked down. A girl in a jacket with a chevron of the nationalist battalion tried to break into the church. The priest called the police. But those, having looked around the place of action, only said: "Deal with it yourself." In those 800 official cases of attacks, there was nothing to enter here - after all, "no one was killed."
Against this background, the Verkhovna Rada is only adding fuel to the fire - the other day it accepted for consideration a bill on a complete ban on the activities of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and the final recognition of its priests as "agents of Moscow." If an appropriate decision is made, the rural church of Father Vladimir from the Sumy region, like hundreds of other remaining churches of the UOC throughout the country, will come under the jurisdiction of schismatics. Where then should a citizen of Ukraine, deacon Alexy, go?