UOC-KP lawyer: Case against Poroshenko opened on Kyiv Patriarchate’s claim

The case against Petro Poroshenko opened at the suit of the UOC-KP. Photo: znaj.ua

Petro Poroshenko will be judged not for the creation of the OCU but for the "raiding of the Kyiv Patriarchate", and he was given suspicion in a case opened at the suit of parishioners of the UOC-KP church of the Nativity of Christ in Odessa. This was announced on her Facebook page by the lawyer of the liquidated religious organization, Neonila Tkachenko, in response to a statement made by the ex-president on June 18, 2020, at the building of the capital's Pechersk District Court.

"We refute the statement of Petro Poroshenko about giving him suspicions for, quote, ‘granting the Tomos’ and ... ‘the creation of the OCU’," the statement goes. “The procedural action – handing over the suspicion was carried out by the State Bureau of Investigation as part of the pre-trial investigation of the criminal offense provided for in Article 161 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine ‘Violation of the equal rights of citizens depending on their religious beliefs’.”

The UOC-KP was reminded that over the course of the year it “was affected by raiding”, which was manifested in “unauthorized changes to the computerized system of the State Register of Legal Entities and the unlawful deprivation of legal capacity of religious organizations in respect of which information about their state of termination is entered.”

“The suspicion was handed over as a result of the statement on the crime of Petro Poroshenko, Yevgeny Nishchuk and Sergey Dumenko by parishioners of the church of the Nativity of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kyiv Patriarchate in Odessa city,” the statement emphasizes. “Citizens of Ukraine, who over the thirty years of the Kyiv Patriarchate’s existence, have proven their ability to defend violated rights, will continue to assist pre-trial investigation authorities and the court in exposing mega crimes against freedom of conscience in Ukraine.”

We will remind, earlier political expert Ruslan Bortnik suggested that Petro Poroshenko’s statement about opening a case against him for inciting sectarian strife is simply an attempt to attract believers to the Orthodox Church of Ukraine.

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