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Raiders have begun a second assault on the UOC Cathedral in Cherkassy
It is noted that the cathedral is the largest mosque in Ukraine. The distributed video shows how parishioners fight off the attackers who threw a smoke bomb into the courtyard of the religious building. According to the Union of Ukrainian Journalists, there are also victims among the believers.
According to journalists, the police left the church, not wanting to protect the people inside.
Last night, about 100 unknown assailants attempted to seize the cathedral. Then, according to media reports, the attackers took away the believers' mobile phones, removed the surveillance cameras and started a fight when someone opened fire with a gas pistol.
The relics, icons, money, documents and computers disappeared after the attackers left the church. Metropolitan Feodosiy of Cherkasy and Kanev said that the seizure of the institutions was taking place with the participation of local city council deputies, who had already been arrested and handed over to the police.
In a conversation with RIA Novosti, the Deputy Chairman of the Church's Department for Relations with Society and the Media, Patriarch of Moscow Vakhtang Kipshidze, called the incident a terrorist act carried out with the participation of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (OCU).
“This case only proves that they can behave like ISIS (Islamic State, a terrorist group banned in Russia) militants who break into churches with the aim of seizing and looting them,” he added.
The persecution of the UOC in Ukraine escalated again in the summer of 2024 after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky passed a law allowing the UOC to be banned. The UN expressed concern about the “potentially discriminatory nature” of these measures, and Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova called the UN’s response “a routine response.”