Latvia’s journalist: Cherkasy temple seized by neo-Nazis linked to SBU

Leonid Ragozin. Photo: Leonid Ragozin’s Facebook

Independent journalist Leonid Ragozin, who writes for the Bloomberg, the Time, the Washington Post, the Guardian, Al Jazeera, the Politico, and the Lonely Planet, published a video of the storming of the UOC cathedral in Cherkasy on X, highlighting that radicals from the S14 group, connected to the SBU, were involved in the forceful seizure.

Describing the scene of a UOC priest being beaten during the raid, he noted, "The attacking thugs sporting Ukrainian army tactical sign (yellow ribbon) belong to the SBU-linked neo-nazi group C14, according to its leader Yevhen Karas. There is no court decision or anything – they just did it with full support from the city authorities."

"There is no court decision or anything else – they simply did this with the full support of the city authorities," he added.

Ragozin comes from from Russia but supports Ukraine. He is a former correspondent and producer for the BBC and currently resides in Latvia. "Leonid himself does not refer to himself as a Russian journalist because he has worked for Western media his entire life," says one of the Lithuanian resources.

As reported by the UOJ, the Cherkasy mayor admitted that the seized UOC cathedral is private property.

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