Mobilized residents of the DPR on the outskirts of Mariupol. Archival photoOLGINKA (Donetsk region), 19 Mar. Father Stanislav from the recently liberated village of Olginka in the Donetsk region told RIA Novosti about how he was waiting for the offensive of the DPR army with his arrival and how he refused to remove the sign of the Moscow Patriarchate from the church, despite pressure from the Security Service of Ukraine. «You know, for all three years that I have been serving here, and during the ten years that I served in Bugas before that, every day there was such anxiety about this, but, as you can see, I do not remove the sign, I think, come what may. Of course, Sbushniks came to Bugas, but not here,» the agency's interlocutor said.DPR forces evacuated 171 people from Mariupol in a dayAccording to him, «particularly ardent» opponents of Russia and the Moscow Patriarchate repeatedly tried to convince him, but his answer was the same. «I did not hang this sign, it's not for me to change it. I'm a priest Orthodox, of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate, and I was ordained a priest in this church, it’s not for me to betray her,” Father Stanislav explained. Recently, services in the Olginka church were held to the sound of shooting and the roar of explosions, he added. “This is the tension it didn’t subside, and when the service began and what we hear now began, only here everyone is kneeling around here, the windows are shaking, I think: Lord, have mercy, if only it didn’t fly out. And one woman says: don’t worry, father, only saints die in church, and we are not saints,» the priest said. Russia launched a military operation in Ukraine on February 24. President Vladimir Putin called its goal «the protection of people who have been subjected to bullying and genocide by the Kiev regime for eight years.» For this, according to him, it is planned to carry out «demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine», to bring to justice all war criminals responsible for «bloody crimes against civilians» in Donbass. According to the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, the Armed Forces strike only at the military infrastructure and Ukrainian troops. With the support of the Russian Armed Forces, the DNR and LNR groups are developing an offensive, but there is no talk of the occupation of Ukraine, the President of Russia emphasized. UOC real, the source said
