Local media accused Cherkassy diocese of the UOC of attempting to squat the cathedral

Cherkasy regional media outlets are spreading information accusing the Cherkasy Diocese of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of attempting to seize the Archangel Michael Cathedral. The media claim that the head of the Cherkasy diocese of the UOC, Metropolitan Theodosius, specifically organized an “attempt to seize” the cathedral in order to draw attention to himself and thus prevent further state expropriation of the church. The article about this was written by journalist Valeriy Vorotnyk of the Antena media outlet.

“It is not known whether anyone really planned to seize the premises on this date, since the activists who are dealing with this issue in Cherkasy did not make any moves in this direction. Instead, we have numerous testimonies from the owners that people were brought to the cathedral by Moscow priests in an organized manner. Among the “defenders of the Orthodox faith” are the nuns of the Krasnogorsk monastery, who are a kind of special forces of the Russian Orthodox Church, who are thrown against communities that express a desire to leave Moscow for the Ukrainian church. Also, a group of hunters with firearms was gathered from other districts of the region and brought to the church in an organized manner — and this fact is the most shocking in this story. There is a war in the country, but organized groups of armed people roam freely in the Cherkasy region, and this does not violate the martial law regime at all, does not pose any threat to national security?” — the journalist writes.

Vorotnyk added that there were allegedly armed people among the believers, and one of the OCU supporters who was present at the scene even appealed to the police about this. However, law enforcement agencies ignored this appeal.

“One of the activists, Korshun Osmolovsky, who became an accidental witness to the incident, reported to the police that there was a large crowd of aggressive people near the cathedral, some of whom were armed. He wrote about this in his Facebook feed. However, the reaction of the patrol police was extremely strange: they arrived at the scene and found no violations in the organized gathering, which continued during the curfew. Instead, according to the owners and our confidential sources, police “sweeps” began in the central part of the city around Sobornyi Park: police stopped young people, especially those in Armed Forces uniforms, and checked their documents. The armed defenders of the Moscow faith did not arouse such close attention from law enforcement. And this was not only alarming, it was annoying — not only for the author of this text, but also for hundreds of activists, veterans of the Russian-Ukrainian war, who are outraged by the bold and openly anti-Ukrainian behavior of the Russian church,” — Valery Vorotnyk added.

The journalist claims that most of the parishioners of St. Michael’s Cathedral allegedly want to move to the OCU, and that the “squatting” is a kind of preventive measure to prevent further attempts to transfer the church to the OCU.

“As Antena learned, a fairly large part of the parishioners of St. Michael’s Cathedral expressed a clear and understandable intention that the community should decide to move to the OCU. However, Theodosius and his henchmen treat the property of the church community as private property. This is a typical behavior of Moscow priests, as they have already privatized the Kyiv Cave Monastery. But decisive actions by the authorities stopped this mess. Given the recently adopted law, all UOC-MP communities must decide to move to other denominations or cease their activities. The legislator has given a fairly long period of time to make a decision, but the law does not say a word about Moscow’s property in Ukrainian cities — it cannot be taken away and taken out of the country, moved to the occupied territories of Donbas or to Muscovy. This is the property not only of the Kremlin priests, but also of the church community, which is part of the territorial community of Cherkasy, and, accordingly, any church building belongs not to the metropolitan as an individual, but to the citizens. This has always been the case, although it was actively ignored by the church “fathers.” The indignation of patriotic Cherkasy residents at the presence of an FSB cell in the center of Cherkasy has no bounds. So is the indignation at the actions of the police and the authorities, who are actually covering up the activities of collaborators,” — the author added.

As a reminder, on the evening of September 29, 2024, in Cherkasy, unidentified persons in camouflage uniforms attempted to raider seize the Archangel Michael Cathedral of the Cherkasy Diocese of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. The raiders, numbering 30 people, entered the territory of the church, intending to break in, but the parishioners of the cathedral managed to defend the shrine.