"An FSB officer comes to the service and takes a video" - an expert on the everyday life of the Ukrainian Church in the occupied territories

This was stated by religious scholar Alexander Sagan in an interview with "Krayina" magazine, according to Gazeta.ua.

"Communities cannot exist without people. Metropolitan Klyment personally told me that an FSB officer comes to the service in the Crimean church and takes a video of everyone present. After that, these people get dismissed from their jobs, and criminal cases are instituted against them. Believers in the occupied territory are being intimidated. There is no religious or diplomatic solution to this issue. Russia does not heed to any decree on freedom of conscience on the peninsula," the expert explains.

According to him, the same problem occurs in the occupied territories of Donetsk and Luhansk regions.

"Some churches are simply getting closed. Their parishioners are arrested and intimidated. In ORDLO, the situation is even worse than in Crimea. The state of affairs will only get worse over time," the religious scholar adds.

Metropolitan Klyment of the Crimean Diocese of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine appealed to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres over the persecution of the Ukrainian Church on the Russian-occupied peninsula. The number of pro-Ukrainian religious communities there has decreased from 49 in 2014 to 6 today.