UOC MP set up mobile groups to block transfer of communities to Orthodox Church of Ukraine

Representatives of the Moscow Patriarchate, collectively with experts from the FSB, the principal security agency of Russia, have set up task force groups in Ukraine that would try block the conversion of parishes from the UOC MP to the Orthodox Church of Ukraine.

This is reported in the statement of the Synodal Department of the military clergy of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine.

"The FSB of Russia received an instruction to apply previously formed mobile task force groups whose main objective is to suppress the desire to voluntarily change affiliation of the laity and clergymen of the Moscow Patriarchate in Ukraine to the Orthodox Church of Ukraine,” the document said.

According to the Ministry of Interior of Ukraine, such mobile groups are set up in each diocese of the UOC MP, with each group including a lawyer and several sporty men.

“The gist of the plan of the Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine now is that once a community of a certain village decides to transfer from the Moscow Patriarchate in Ukraine and to join the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, the group “for ensuring property rights” is deployed in the corresponding settlement to take care of the issues of physical control over the church.

An extremely dangerous situation is emerging when the Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine wants to make the faithful and priests its serfs,” the military chaplains note.