On April 19, 2023, in the village of Gilcha of the Zdolbunovsky deanery of Rivne, supporters of the OCU cut the locks off the doors of the St. Nicholas Church and seized it. This was reported by the Information and Education Department of the UOC with reference to the press service of the Rivne diocese.

According to eyewitnesses, there were few church raiders, a few women and tipsy men. However, one of the “activists” Alexander Krotyuk came with his tool and broke down the door of the temple.

The reason for the seizure of the temple was the news about the funeral of the Ukrainian defender Bogdan Shvai, who should be sung by the priests of the UOC.

“The mother of the deceased soldier came to my house to discuss the details of the funeral, when she left to go home, people from the OCU caught up with her and began to persuade her to bury her son in the OCU,” says Archimandrite German Kulakevich, rector of the Nikolaev Church. – Mom then called, told and cried. I believe that today no one has the right to mock heartbroken women and even more so to impose their religious beliefs on them.

The initiators of the pressure on the mother of the deceased soldier were two women: EU MP Kateryna Tyshkovets and local OCU activist Olga Shevchuk. After they failed to convince their mother to bury the defender of Ukraine in the OCU, these two women rebelled some of the people and brought the locks on the Nicholas Church to be cut.

After two hours of verbal skirmishes between activists and believers of the UOC, OCU supporters, under the close supervision of law enforcement officers, sealed the church. The church raiders allowed believers of the UOC to take off the paper and enter their church only for the time of the funeral of the defender. Further, people from the OCU plan to use the church at their discretion.