Pereyaslav, Kiev Province, Ukraine, November 7, 2022
Fr. Oleg Rodionov of the Church of Sts. Boris and Gleb in Pereyaslav was beaten by schismatics. Photo: spzh.news
The schismatics of the “Orthodox Church of Ukraine” continue their campaign against the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church.
In two incidents in the Kiev Province over the weekend, clerics and women were violently beaten during the church seizures.
On the evening of Thursday, November 3, OCU supporters gathered in front of the Holy Cross Church in the village of Demyantsy and began insulting and berating the Orthodox faithful who were praying inside. When parishioners tried to reason with the schismatics, the latter responded with threats, throwing stones and trying to hit women, reports the Information-Education Department of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.
“We’re going to kill you!” the schismatics shouted, leaving only once the police were called.
The faithful remained at the church until late in the evening, worried the violent nationalists would return, which they did the next afternoon. Several men, some covering their faces with balaclavas, climbed the church fence and used a power saw to cut off the locks on the fence and the doors of the church.
When Deacon Vladimir tried to stop them, they beat him and his wife and again threatened to kill the parishioners. They again dispersed when the police arrived.
This was the third attempt on the church. The chairman of the local village council is involved in organizing the attempts, the faithful attest.
At about 5:30 the next morning, Fr. Oleg Rodionov, who lives on the territory of Sts. Boris and Gleb Church in Pereyaslav, Kiev Province, came out to defend his church against representatives of the local territorial defense who had broken the locks.
The church was illegally reregistered to the schismatics already over the summer, despite the parish community’s devotion to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church under His Beatitude Metropolitan Onuphry of Kiev and All Ukraine.
The raiders physically beat Fr. Oleg and his wife and continued their violent seizure of the church with the help of Mayor Vyacheslav Saulko, reports the Information-Education Department.
According to Fr. Oleg, there were about 15 people involved. When he tried to stop the raiders, he was knocked to the ground, beat several times, and sprayed in the face with pepper spray.
“They trampled me like a herd of elephants,” the priest said. They also seized his wife’s phone and deleted the video she had made of the incident.
Such people are “Aryans and purebred Banderites,” commented Viktoria Kokhanovskaya, a lawyer and head of the All-Ukrainian organization Women’s Power of Ukraine. But the Orthodox faithful continue to stand strong, she writes.
One parishioner commented on the said situation:
We’re trying to preserve our faith and the faith of our ancestors, and we’re told that we’re enemies, traitors and Muscovites. We speak Ukrainian, we were born here, we want to save our faith for our children and great-grandchildren. I don’t want to be kicked out of this church. When the war started, we prayed for peace, when the epidemic broke out, we prayed for the health of all people, not just those who were in church, and now they label us that we are not like that, that we’re different. Who decided this?
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