A New Raider Scheme: Cherkasy Authorities May Attempt to Seize the St. Michael’s Cathedral of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and Transfer It to the Orthodox Church of Ukraine

The situation surrounding the St. Michael’s Cathedral of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in Cherkasy continues to escalate. According to information published by the “DOZOR” resource on “First Cossack,” the editorial office has obtained a document indicating that a new plan may be in the works to transfer the shrine to municipal ownership.

The DOZOR team obtained a request from the Cherkasy Regional Prosecutor’s Office to the city council. In the document, prosecutors claim to have identified a “complex of buildings,” which includes the cathedral, the ownership of which is allegedly “unregistered.” It is noteworthy that in the request itself, the shrine is referred to as the “cathedral,” despite attempts by representatives of the OCU to rename the site the “garrison cathedral.”

As the authors of the investigation note, the prosecutor’s office uses contradictory reasoning: in the same text, the agency first refers to an “unknown” owner, and then acknowledges that ownership is registered to the Cherkasy Diocese of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC). The likely goal of these actions is to force the city council to “designate” the owner as allegedly absent, which would create a legal basis for transferring the cathedral to municipal ownership.

According to experts from the “DOZOR” project, this initiative indicates that those involved in the seizure of the church were unable to find legal ways to legitimize their appropriation of the property. Now they are attempting to shift responsibility for potential legal violations onto local government authorities, forcing officials to ignore existing documents regarding ownership.