Archpriest Nikolay Danilevich, deputy head of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church’s DECR, noted that the media again observed an increase in votes, and in fact a new information attack or information blackmail of the Verkhovna Rada deputies regarding the need to ban the Ukrainian Orthodox Church on the part of certain forces. He wrote about it on his own Telegram channel.

He added that the main idea of this information attack – allegedly the UOC is a threat to the security of the state.

But according to the clergyman, how can the Church, whose Primate on the first day of the war condemned the Russian intervention and called on everyone to defend Ukraine; whose Primate on the first day of the war left Chernivtsi for Kyiv (actually to meet the enemy, who was then encircling Kyiv and condemning the enemy for the attack), while many of today’s patriots heroically fled Kyiv, and for some time were afraid to return to the capital; whose Primate, and the Church itself at the synodal level, in almost every official address on the occasion of this or that public holiday speaks about the need to defend the country, about supporting the state and statehood; whose believers fight and defend the country at the front; whose believers collect aid for the front and rear and work for the country every day; whose clergy pray and bury / repose their dead believers – citizens of Ukraine?

“Found as many as 65 people who have committed certain violations (and even then not all are not yet proven, in most cases are pre-trial investigations) out of 12,000 clergy (+ 5,000 monks) and let’s ban everyone, the whole Church? Prove the guilt and punish specific guilty persons, and leave everyone else alone”, – wrote Father Nicholas.

He added that while the UN Monitoring Mission points out the facts of violation of the rights of believers of the UOC and the facts of discrimination, our deputies “instead of correcting this, further aggravate the situation, register new bills (a total of 12 bills aimed at banning our Church), collecting signatures for the ban. This is absurd.”