Hryshchuk compares OCU clerics seizing UOC churches to TRC officers
The OCU cleric complained that the state shifts responsibility for conflicts during seizures of UOC churches onto OCU clergy while providing them with no protection.
OCU “priest” Hryshchuk commented on the July 8, 2026 attack by Lviv residents on TRC officers and drew a parallel with situations in which he and his colleagues risk their health while fighting UOC communities. He wrote about this on Facebook.
According to Hryshchuk, the state is waging its “fight” against the Moscow Patriarchate (MP) through OCU clerics: instead of a systematic legislative ban, the authorities rely on members of Dumenko’s organization. “You transfer, take on all the fire, conflicts, and legal hell, while we will wait,” he wrote, describing the state’s position.
“We are ‘lightning rods’. When a conflict arises, the state does not act as a guarantor of the law; it merely states the fact: ‘Well, you have a conflict there, sort it out yourselves.’ If it works – good, well done, this is our victory. If it does not – well, it is ‘you’ [the OCU] who failed to reach an agreement,” Hryshchuk complained.
According to him, “this is very similar to the situation with the TRC: when the system shifts its responsibility onto the executors, it automatically makes them the scapegoats.”
Hryshchuk believes that an OCU cleric “transferring” a UOC church is like a TRC officer. Both, he says, are doing important work, but both lack proper state support: “A priest on the ground is that very ‘executor’ who is supposed to solve a state issue on his own, taking all the blows upon himself.”
“We, the priests and faithful of the OCU, have taken on this burden because it is our duty before God and Ukraine. But is the state apparatus, headed by the President, ready to lend a shoulder, and not merely declare things and wait for results?” Hryshchuk asked.
As the UOJ reported, according to Hryshchuk, if the UOC hands over its church voluntarily, there is no need for angle grinders.
