Ihor Miroshnichenko, a member of the nationalist Svoboda party, former deputy and former sports commentator, said that the UOC churches should be taken away and “returned to the fold of the Ukrainian mother church,” and “Moscow priests” and His Beatitude Metropolitan Onuphry “should be expelled” from the country. He made such a statement on Facebook.

Miroshnichenko called the St. Panteleimon Monastery of the UOC in Feofania “the center of propaganda for Putin and Gundyaevsky obscurantism”, and said that the clergy of the UOC should be “expelled” from Ukraine.

He also tried to accuse the UOC of “illegal construction” on the territory that has officially belonged to the monastery for many years.