People's deputy demands from the National Security and Defense Council to terminate lease agreements with monasteries of the UOC for monasteries in Volyn

Ukrainian MP Ihor Guz has called on the National Security and Defence Council (NSDC) and the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) to take immediate measures to terminate 50-year lease agreements for the Zimnyna and Nizkinich monasteries in Volyn, which were signed with monastic communities of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. The MP also demanded an inspection of the former head of the Volyn regional state administration, Yuriy Pohulyayko, under whom these agreements were concluded.

According to the portal BUG, with the corresponding appeal Igor Guz made from the rostrum of the Verkhovna Rada. He stated that in 2020, the then head of the Volyn regional state administration Yuriy Pohulyayko instructed his deputy Anatoliy Kostik to extend the lease agreements for the Holy Assumption Zimnya and Holy Assumption Nizkinich Monasteries of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in Volyn for a period of 50 years.

In this regard, Ihor Guz appealed to the head of the Security Service of Ukraine Vasyl Malyuk with a request to «start a check against Yuriy Pohulyayko on the fact of possible interconnection with the enemy and making anti-state decisions». In addition, he called on the National Security and Defence Council to make a political decision to terminate all long-term lease agreements with structures of the Moscow Patriarchate and return Zimnyensky, Nizkinich and other monasteries to state ownership.

We shall remind you that a deputy of the Volyn regional council Andriy Bokoch said that the state has plans to expropriate the complex of premises of the Holy Dormition Zimnyensky Zimnyensky Women’s Stavropigial Monastery of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. Bokoch noted that it would not be as easy to seize the Zimnya monastery as, for example, the cathedral of the Volodymyr-Volyn diocese of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, but the mood for this step is quite resolute.