Pepper gas against parishioners: how a UOC-MP priest's confrontation with a community that joined the OCU ended in Vinnytsia region
Kyiv • UNN
How the confrontation between a priest of the UOC-MP and a community that joined the OCU ended in Vinnytsia region
At a time when Russia has resumed massive attacks on Ukraine, and civilians are being killed by enemy missiles and drones, a local priest of the UOC-MP has launched his war against people who have decided to move to the Orthodox Church of Ukraine in Ladyzhyn, Vinnytsia region.
We are talking about the rector of the Holy Kazan Church, Yevgeny Vorobyov, who does not allow parishioners who have created a community of the OCU to enter the church.
Details of the situation - the head of the newly created community, ATO/JFO veteran Mykhailo Bondarenko in an exclusive commentary to UNN.
According to him, the transition to the Orthodox Church of Ukraine was a conscious decision of the people, and everything happened on legal grounds.
"We held a meeting at which we unanimously decided to transfer from the UOC-MP to the OCU and transfer the church to the newly created religious community. According to the law, according to the documents that were provided to us on the transition, we wanted to exercise our rights.
We came to the church, and the priest started shouting at us, swearing. We offered him to open the gate. He refused. All the doors in this church were propped up, blocked with concrete blocks. And welded from the inside. Another door had a metal cabinet leaning against it. We still went into the church and gave the priest all the documents. He called them invalid and forged," said Mykhailo Bondarenko.
He recalled that while they were talking to the priest on the street, his few supporters entered the church and then tried to provoke a conflict in every possible way.
"Women came with strollers with children. It was their next performance. They used tear gas against us, beat us with sticks. There were a lot of victims on our side: from the gas, faces were torn, and legs were crushed. This was all recorded by the police and the SBU. We did not succumb to provocations and did not use physical force. We had to turn around and leave in order not to make a show of it," Bondarenko added.
The head of the newly created OCU community emphasized that they will continue to act exclusively by legal means. He emphasized that people who support the priest will continue to be able to attend church, and no one is going to expel them.
"We will continue to act in accordance with the current legislation. Just as we have done before. If necessary, we will defend our rights in courts.
We offered Father Yevgeny to go over to the side of the OCU. He refused.
The people who support him will continue to be able to attend services in the St. Kazan Church of Ladyzhyn. No one is going to expel them," Bondarenko said.
Regarding the decision to transfer, he said that in the second year of the full-scale invasion, the Moscow Patriarchate and any religious structures associated with Russia have no place in Ukraine.
In addition, Bondarenko said, Yevhen Vorobyov did not recognize that Russia had attacked Ukraine. He cynically called the war unleashed by the bloody aggressor on our land a "civil war.
The last straw for the residents of Ladyzhyn was the fact that the priest's son would soon become a chaplain in the Russian army.
"We received information that the priest's son is studying to become a military chaplain at the St. Petersburg Theological Academy," Bondarenko said.
This information is also confirmed by local media. Moreover, Yevhen Vorobyov's son, Dmytro Vorobyov, began studying at the academy remotely in 2020. And since April 2022, after the start of the full-scale invasion, he has been staying in Russia. He was even spotted during a religious procession in honor of St. Alexander Nevsky.
Local journalists also write that Yevhen Vorobyov spreads pro-Russian narratives among parishioners and refused to perform funeral services for fallen Ukrainian soldiers.
