In Kinakhovtsy village a handful of KP members bully the UOC community’s headman

On May 14 in Kinakhovtsy village, Zbarazh district, Ternopol region, the UOC KP adherents took on open threats towards the community’s headman of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.

According to the UOJ, senior priest of the local temple of Saint Apostles Peter and Paul Vitaliy Gurev reported that on this day nearly 20 persons – so called initiative group on “transition” of the community to the Kiev Patriarchate – arrived at the house of the UOC headman Stepan Tivoniak. The unwanted guests demanded that the man give them the temple keys for them “to hold a moleben service.”

By the priest’s accounts, on previous Sundays during worship services of the UOC community, nobody barred the members of the Kiev Patriarchate from coming to the temple and pray there. The UOC community qualifies the recent behavior of their fellow villagers as a provocation. Upon the arrival of the “initiative group” the headman called the police.

Kinakhovtsy is the last populated area in the district with the survived UOC community. Residents of the nearby villages which have already suffered from church raiding are going now to the temple of Kinakhovtsy to participate in canonical divine worships.

At the end of winter of 2017 the “transition” issue also extended onto Kinakhovtsy having faced a number of provocations initiated by the Kiev Patriarchate and the “Right Sector”. The UOC community took actions to avoid forced re-registration of its statute and legal standing in favor of the Kiev Patriarchate.