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Easter services for Kiev's churches to be held online this weekend

Tensions around the UOC have escalated in recent weeks

MOSCOW, April 11. /TASS/. Authorities in Kiev said on Tuesday that Easter services would go virtual on Sunday.

"[Easter] services at churches will be conducted online amid the curfew from midnight to 5:00 a.m. (same as Moscow time - TASS)," the Kiev administration said on Telegram. The municipal authorities have asked religious community leaders "to limit holding mass services and provide extensive online broadcasts from places of worship on Ukrainian television and on the Internet."

Earlier, the breakaway Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU) said it would hold its Easter service at the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra instead of the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC).

Over the past year, the Kiev regime has been dead set on ousting the UOC. On orders from Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, the government has drafted and submitted to parliament a draft law banning the canonical Church.

Tensions around the UOC have escalated in recent weeks. Supporters of the schismatic OCU have been seizing canonical churches and attacking priests. Local authorities have denied the UOC the right to rent the land the churches sit on, terminated the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra’s lease with the canonical Church and demanded that the monks leave the monastery. Since early this year, more than 60 UOC parishes have been re-registered with the OCU, according to Ukrainian estimates.

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