OCU activists stage provocation during a meeting of UOC hierarch with OSCE

A meeting of the ruling bishop of the Zhitomir eparchy with OSCE representatives

On February 14, 2019, the OCU adherents organized a provocation under the building of the Zhitomir Eparchial Administration of the UOC, reports the UOJ sources.

The activists of the new church structure came to the building of the eparchial administration precisely when the meeting of Metropolitan Nikodim (Gorenko) of Zhitomir and Novograd-Volynsky with OSCE SMM representatives took place.

The provocateurs were holding picket signs, which contradicted each other: "The Local Church of Ukraine – peace and unification", "Down with invaders in cassocks! Change the stars to crosses!".

A few days earlier, members of the National Corps and VO Svoboda addressed the head of the Zhitomir Regional State Administration and the Ministers of Defense and Education of Ukraine with a request to “influence the solution of problems” with the UOC. The radicals complained to the authorities that in many temples of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in Malin and the Malin district clergymen allegedly lead “a hidden pro-Russian campaign and the promotion of de facto anti-Ukrainian ideas”.

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