SBU again reports on the number of cases against UOC clergymen

Since the beginning of the Russian-Ukrainian war, the Security Service of Ukraine has initiated more than 200 criminal proceedings against representatives of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church “for anti-Ukrainian activities and other crimes”. Dozens of clergymen, including high-ranking hierarchs, were suspected and sentenced “for working for the Russian security services, justifying aggression and destabilizing the situation in the country”.

According to the Security Service of Ukraine, 27 top officials of the church – metropolitans and archbishops – are among those involved in 208 criminal proceedings. According to the investigation, they “carried out the tasks of the Russian special services, using religious communities to recruit agents, justify war crimes and calls for the seizure of Ukrainian territories”.

In total, according to the Security Service, 78 representatives of the UOC have been suspected of committing crimes, and 40 clergymen have already been sentenced to prison, including four diocesan administrators. Also on the initiative of the SBU, Ukrainian citizenship was terminated for 19 clerics “with Russian passports,” among them the Primate of the UOC, His Beatitude Metropolitan Onuphrius of Kyiv and All Ukraine. According to the intelligence service, he “deliberately opposed to obtaining canonical independence of the Ukrainian Church and supports the policy of the Russian Orthodox Church”.

We will remind, earlier the vicar of the Svyatogorsk Lavra Metropolitan Arseny during a court hearing in Dnipro said that the security services offer him to go for an exchange, but he categorically refuses to leave the country. He emphasized his deep ties with Ukraine and his flock and asked the court to allow him to stay for necessary medical treatment.