OCU head accuses UOC of provocations during church seizures

The head of the OCU, Epiphany Dumenko, gave a lengthy interview to the TV channel “We-Ukraine” owned by Ukrainian oligarch Rinat Akhmetov. In it, Dumenko accused representatives of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of creating provocations during the seizures of UOC churches by representatives of the OCU. He claims that priests and believers of the UOC do this in order to “create a picture for Russian propaganda.” The interview of the head of the OCU is posted on the website of the TV channel “We-Ukraine”.

“Unfortunately, as we see, there are sometimes provocations, but these are artificially created provocations in order to create a picture outside, to show that, you see, there is persecution and persecution in Ukraine, but in reality there is no such thing. Because the All-Ukrainian Council of Churches has repeatedly stated that in Ukraine, despite the fact that we are in martial law, that is, in a state of war, we have a very high level of freedom of religion. Probably not in other countries, even in Europe and America, because according to recent sociological surveys, we see that Ukrainians say that there are no persecutions, persecutions, and so on in Ukraine, but they need to create a picture. This is probably the task of the Russian Federation, the Moscow Patriarchate, to create such images for our partners, to provoke us so that we do not receive appropriate assistance, but these are only individual episodes, rare episodes, in most cases this process is really peaceful, calm, because, for example, if the community makes a decision: 90% are in favor, there are a few people against. But those who are against, they are always very active and create these problems and obstacles, but this is a process, these are people and, unfortunately, sometimes there are such unpleasant incidents, provocations, but they are from the aggressor country, because it is beneficial to them,” – Epifaniy said.