DESS head: There’s already a strategy to fight UOC but I won’t disclose it

Viktor Yelensky already knows how he will deal with UOC communities. Photo: TSN

Viktor Yelensky already knows how he will deal with UOC communities. Photo: TSN

The head of the State Ethnopolitics Service, Viktor Yelensky, said in an interview with "Ukrainian Radio" that his structure already has a strategy for the mechanism of banning UOC communities but he will not voice it so as not to open cards to the opponents.

"We have three lawyers; we have a vision of how we will implement it (the UOC ban – Ed.). And we are already in the courts, because against the State Service, against me personally, lawsuits have been filed in the interests of the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra, the UOC-MP. And it is an understandable situation when they want to knock out those who are responsible for this part of work. But it seems to me that we more or less clearly see the legal line by which we will act," said Yelensky.

According to him, DESS already has a strategy for legal proceedings with UOC communities. But he refused to give details "so as not to the work of opponents".

Earlier Yelensky, commenting on the absence in the Statute of any indication of UOC-ROC ties, said that "anything can be removed from the Statute", but DESS knows that there are such ties.

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