KIEV, January 9. /TASS/. Unknown vandals painted over with red paint memorial plaques installed on the walls of the Eastern Orthodox Transfiguration Cathedral in the northern Ukrainian city of Chernigov on Monday, Anna Romanova, a deputy chairperson of the committee for tourism and recreation at the Verkhovna Rada wrote in Facebook.

"The Transfiguration Cathedral is the most ancient Eastern Orthodox Church in Eastern Europe," she wrote.

"It’s almost 1,000 years old at present."

Ukraine has one canonical Orthodox Church at present - the Ukrainian Orthodox Church reporting to Moscow Patriarchate. It is a self-governing division of the broader Russian Orthodox Church.

Also, the country has two religious organization, the status of which is not recognized by the global community of canonical Eastern Orthodox Churches. They are the Ukrainian Orthodox Church reporting to Kiev Patriarchate and the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church.

The unrecognized Kiev Patriarchate is conducting an extremely aggressive policy towards the parishes of the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church reporting to Moscow Patriarchate. Seizures of church compounds have taken on a systemic character. The canonical Church lost forty parishes in recent years. All of them have been taken over by the Kiev Patriarchate.

Earlier on Monday, members of the radical Ukrainian organization S14 blocked the entrance to the caves of the world-famous Kiev Pechersk Laura, also known as the Monastery of the Caves. They protested against refusal of the clergy to hold requiem services for the military killed during the armed operation in Donbass who had been baptized in the parishes outside the realm of Moscow Patriarchate.

In spite of some small clashes, no one was detained during the nationalists’ action.