MOSCOW, April 2 Mayor of Ukrainian Khmelnitsky Alexander Simchyshyn said that the police officers who drew up a military protocol for attacking a priest of the canonical UOC cathedral should be fired.
Earlier, the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church reported that on Sunday morning a man in military uniform attacked a clergyman of the Intercession Cathedral in Khmelnytsky in Ukraine, disrupted the service, and also damaged the Holy Gospel. According to the UOC, a police squad arrived at the scene and arrested the man, a criminal case was opened against him under the article «petty hooliganism.»
“The patrolmen who drew up a report on the military should be fired,” Simchishin wrote in his Telegram channel.
Over the past year, the Ukrainian authorities organized the largest wave of persecution of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in the country's recent history. Referring to its connection with Russia, local authorities in different regions of Ukraine decided to ban the activities of the UOC, and a bill on its actual ban in Ukraine was submitted to the country's parliament. The authorities have imposed sanctions against some representatives of the UOC clergy. The Security Service of Ukraine began to open criminal cases against the clergy of the UOC, to conduct «counterintelligence measures» — searches of bishops and priests, in churches and monasteries, in search of evidence of «anti-Ukrainian activities».