Kremenets parishioner: My husband went to war for you to take our churches?

Parishioners whose husbands are at the front do not understand what they are fighting for if their churches are taken away. Photo: FB Karpiuk

Outraged by the actions of the authorities in taking away the St. Nicholas Church and forcibly evicting the Regents' School in Kremenets, UOC parishioners say that they do not understand why their husbands are fighting at the front if their shrines are taken away at home. The video of the dialogues was posted on journalist Zoya Karpiuk's FB page.

"For what and for whom my husband went to fight?” asks the journalist one of the women. “For you, for you to take away churches? He went to this church (St. Nicholas Cathedral – Ed.). What right do you have to take it away?".

"You want to say that such a warrior (a UOC parishioner – Ed.) who went to fight for Ukraine is not Ukrainian? Or we are not Ukrainians?" another woman wonders.

"If they go to this church, let them not go to war. If we 'pray for Moscow', why should we go to war?" remarks a third.

Another woman said that when services began at the St Nicholas Cathedral in 1990 after the atheistic USSR, she was one of the first parishioners here, with only 9 people besides her.

"So what, I'm not Ukrainian now? There was a Ukrainian flag hanging here, I raised my children for 40 years and taught them to love the symbols of Ukraine," she says.

"It just doesn't fit in my head. To gather so many policemen in our peaceful Kremenets, to block half the town. For what? What have we done to whom?" another woman is indignant.

According to the parishioners, the law enforcers seized newly-built buildings besides historical ones, which the authorities have no relation to.

"There is a new yellow building on the territory of the complex. There too, people not known to the community, who did not introduce themselves and did not show any documents broke in. This building is the property of the community, we have ownership. It is the same as if they came to our house," the parishioner stated.

As reported, according to the UOC priest, our history has not seen cases when students were driven out into the cold at night.

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