In Pryputni "Svoboda" nationalists seize UOC temple

The church of the UOC in Pryputni seized by supporters of the OCU. Photo: a video screenshot from G. Sukharevsky's Facebook page

On April 4, 2021, nationalists from the Svoboda party organized the seizure of the Holy Nativity of the Theotokos Church of the UOC in the village of Pryputni, Chernihiv region.

As the parishioners reported, at night the raiders cut off the locks on the temple and put on their own. And already in the afternoon, with the informational support of Channel 5 and with the police inaction, they entered the church.

According to the parishioners, about 20 people came to the village to organize the seizure. Some of them were identified by the believers - they were participants in the seizures of UOC churches in other settlements of the region, in particular, in the villages of Kruty, Parafiyevka, etc.

Besides the nationalists from "Svoboda", representatives of the radical organization "Brotherhood" of Dmitry Korchinsky, who allegedly came to take comments for their information resource, also appeared in Pryputni.

Now there is a sign on the temple that this is the temple of the OCU. The national flag was also raised on it.

It should be noted that the Holy Nativity of the Theotokos Church of the UOC in the village of Pryputni has previously been subjected to raider attacks by supporters of the OCU. During one of them, in September 2019, activists beat the abbot Fr. Sergius and a parishioner who was hospitalized. Then the believers of the UOC managed to defend their shrine – they continued to worship in their church.

The UOC believers claim that the representatives of the OCU, headed in Pryputni by hieromonk Leonty, who is banned from the priesthood, have no legal rights to this church. They only have a certificate of re-registration of the statute, obtained as a result of a fictitious meeting.

Recently, signatures were collected in the village in defence of the temple. Not less than 300 people spoke out for it to remain in the use of the community of the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church.

As reported earlier, OCU supporters illegally deprived the UOC community of the right to the temple in Uspenka.

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