MOSCOW, April 22. /TASS/. People in military uniform on Saturday morning sawed down the locks and seized the church of the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) in the Kiev region’s village of Trebukhov, with parishioners taking refuge in the refectory, a Ukrainian Telegram channel reported.

In the published video, people in military uniforms can be seen. They pushed back the parishioners and broke into the church. The police did not interfere with what was happening. According to the Telegram channel, some of the parishioners, mostly women with children, hid inside the refectory. It is reported that the people who seized the temple are now trying to break through there as well.

Tensions over the UOC, which the Ukrainian authorities are trying to shut out, are heating up every day. Under Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, the government has prepared and introduced to the parliament a bill aimed at banning the UOC. At the same time, the authorities actively promote the schismatic Orthodox Church of Ukraine, created from two non-canonical churches in 2018 under Pyotr Poroshenko, who was Ukraine’s president at the time.

The Kiev regime supports the policy of driving the UOC out. Over the past year, UOC priests have been accused of high treason or sanctioned while the takeover of churches by schismatics has intensified. In March, the UOC’s lease at the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra was terminated while its monks were told to leave the premises. UOC clergymen are charged with state treason, sanctions are introduced against them, and 13 of them were stripped of their citizenship.