The Chernivtsi City Council demanded that the community of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church vacate the temple in honor of the Holy Great Martyr Panteleimon, which the believers built on the territory of the central city hospital, suspilne.media reports.

The term of the next lease agreement expired on July 31, 2022, but, according to the Cabinet of Ministers, it must be extended for the period of martial law and for another four months after the end of the war. However, the authorities of Chernivtsi decided differently: on April 27, 2023, at the same session of the city council at which the UOC was deprived of the right to use land plots, the deputies also decided to terminate the lease agreement for the church of the Holy Great Martyr Panteleimon. The basis for such a decision, they called the conclusions of the “religious expertise” of the State Ethnopolitics, which allegedly discovered the “church-canonical connection” of the UOC with the Moscow Patriarchate. The rector of the parish, Archpriest Georgy Aronets, who wanted to speak at the session, was not given the floor.

“It is very painful to talk about this – this temple is dear to us, this is our child. We must strive not for confrontation, not for a quarrel, but for dialogue. It would be better if the servants of the people organized some kind of commissions, round tables for communication, in order to come to some kind of unity, ”says the rector of the temple.