A sign on the building of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) in KyivKHERSON, Apr 10The Security Service of Ukraine considered it dangerous for Ukraine to celebrate Orthodox holidays in Kherson, which Russia allegedly could use for its own purposes, follows from the documents of the SBU. Representatives of the law enforcement agencies of the Russian Federation in Kherson got operational documents of the SBU Directorate for the Kherson region under the heading «top secret». Separate cases were exclusively made available to RIA Novosti. Some of the documents are related to the work of the SBU to put pressure on representatives of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate and Cossack communities, which were identified as pro-Russian. employees with their agents. Among them is a certificate of a secret meeting (appearance) held on March 16, 2021 between an SBU officer and an agent under the pseudonym «Konstantin». The agent conveyed «operationally significant information» — in particular, he said that the secretary of the Kherson diocese of the UOC was convening its clergy to hold a procession through the streets of Kherson on March 21, 2021 and a prayer service on the occasion of the feast of the Triumph of Orthodoxy with the number of participants approximately 1 thousand people.
Documents of the SBU classified as «top secret» were found in Kherson. At the same time, no arguments were given on how specifically Russia could use the procession in Kherson. The Triumph of Orthodoxy is a holiday in Orthodox churches celebrated on the first week (Sunday) of Great Lent. At the moment, not all discovered documents of the SBU department in the Kherson region are available for publication . Russian specialists continue to study them in order to determine the expediency of implementing them in a criminal procedure. Earlier, a former security officer of Ukraine in the Kherson region told RIA Novosti that the SBU has been putting pressure on the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate for several years and is provoking to deepen the split between Russian and Ukrainian communities and foment Russophobic sentiments.The SBU considered the cooperation of the Cossacks with the UOC in Kherson a threat to Ukraine. Later, the same employee told RIA Novosti that the SBU officer for the Kherson region, who had previously supervised the Orthodox direction, Aleksey Palamarchuk extorted money from the clergy of the Kherson diocese of the UOC-MP, citing the need for material support for the ATO participants (this is how the war is called in Kyiv against the LNR and the DNR). At the same time, the secret service officer put pressure on the clergy, threatening to close the work of churches for security reasons. To put pressure on the clergy and parishioners of the UOC-MP, the Ukrainian security forces, under the pretext of anti-terrorist exercises, planted mock explosives in packages and evacuated citizens during the service, the agency’s interlocutor said. Recently in Ukraine, attacks by nationalists on churches, clergy and believers of the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church became more frequent. In addition, in March, a bill was submitted to the Verkhovna Rada to ban the activities of the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church, seize its real estate and other property. The Russian Orthodox Church said that the adoption of bills aimed at liquidating the UOC would lead to an aggravation of the crisis and provoke a new round of civil confrontation.The SBU in Kherson extorted money from the church for the Ukrainian security forces The structure called the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU) was formed at the end of 2018 on the initiative of the ex-president of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko and Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople in opposition to the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate. In January 2019, the Patriarchate of Constantinople granted the OCU a «tomos of autocephaly». However, the OCU is in fact subordinate to the Patriarchate of Constantinople, and most of the 15 local Orthodox churches in the world do not recognize it as canonical. region in the south of the country. Later, the permanent representative of Crimea under the President of Russia, Deputy Prime Minister of the region Georgy Muradov said that in the Kherson region and in the south of the Zaporozhye region of Ukraine, which are under the control of the Russian military, they began to form military-civilian administrations, launched the process of broadcasting Russian television and radio broadcasting, and the population became use Russian rubles more widely in settlements.
