Are the authorities deliberately destroying UOC clergy through TRC offices?
Bishop Seraphim. Photo: UOC Press Service
The UOJ has learned of a case in Rivne region, where a priest with a lawful deferment due to having four young children was placed on the wanted list as a draft dodger. The extension of his deferment had been issued very recently. Thanks to his personal relations with ordinary employees of the Territorial Conscription Center (from whom he learned that he was on the list), he has not yet been taken away – but he can no longer freely travel the roads to perform services.
We must ask: how can a man with a valid deferment end up on the wanted list? Only if he was deliberately placed there. This means that not only is the clergy not exempted from mobilization by virtue of their ordination – they are being hunted precisely because of their belonging to the UOC.
The 58-year-old (!) rector of a persecuted community in Maliatyntsi, Fr. Mykola Hubko, was abducted by Conscription Center staff and driven around Ukraine for several days. Apparently, only because no commander wanted to take on an elderly, grey-haired, and far from athletic priest, he was eventually released.
Archpriest Volodymyr Hlavatsky from Pyriatyn was less fortunate. He was served a summons in the cemetery while performing a funeral service for a fallen Ukrainian soldier (!). Though he had lawful grounds for deferment, he calmly went to the TRC – but never returned. He is now awaiting imminent dispatch to the front.
And these are only isolated examples – in reality the number is already in the hundreds. It gives the impression that TRC employees have been given orders from above to “hunt” the clergy. It seems that seizures, beatings, and imprisonment are no longer considered sufficient. Now there is a new “argument” to force the so-called “Moscow priests” to join the OCU.
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