MOSCOW, April 30. /TASS/. A group of radicals attempted to attack Metropolitan Onufry, the head of the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) in Kiev, not far from the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra, Ukraine’s Union of Orthodox Journalists (SPJ) reported on Saturday.

"On April 29, 2023, a group of radicals tried to attack His Holiness Metropolitan Onufry, who was coming out of the St. Agapetus of Pechersk Church, near the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra," the SPJ said in a statement on its website.

In the video attached by the union, over a dozen opponents of the UOC were following Metropolitan Onufry, who was walking to his car after worshipping in the church. They tried to get in the way of the car shouting out provocative slogans. According to the union, the monastery’s security guards and the police shielded the primate of the canonical denomination from the violent crowd, preventing an attack.

The situation around the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra escalated to the boiling point after the monks of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church had refused to leave the monastery by order of the directorate of the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra Historical and Cultural Reserve. On March 30, a commission of the Ukrainian Culture Ministry arrived at the Lavra for a property inventory but the clergy led by Metropolitan Pavel alongside parishioners did not let them in, and did the same on the following day. On Friday, scuffles broke out near the walls of the monastery, and there were reports about a potential attack. On Saturday, Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) charged Metropolitan Pavel with inciting religious hatred and justifying Russia’s actions in Ukraine.