“You will repent and cry”: the hellish show in the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra continued

Ukrainian police commit arbitrariness against the defenders of the UOC

The Ukrainian authorities have decided to spoil even Bright Week, the festive week after Easter, for the believers of the UOC. On Wednesday, the commission of the Ministry of Culture sealed a number of monastery premises, and on Thursday the parishioners were informed that the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra was mined … The Ukrainian Ministry of Culture announces the complete seizure of the temple complex next week.

On Wednesday, a so-called commission from the Ukrainian Ministry of Culture, with the support of police officers who first appeared in the Lavra with machine guns at the ready, sealed the 39th building and the gallery of the monastery, blocking access to them. At the same time, part of the parishioners and clergy remained in the premises locked by the raiders. Among the hostages was Victoria Kokhanovskaya, the leader of the protesters against the seizure of the Lavra.

Despite the security of the sealed building by the armed police, the parishioners were able to knock down the blocked door and free the people trapped there, shouting the slogan: “The Lavra belongs to the people!”

Kokhanovskaya herself became ill with her heart and an ambulance was called for her. Doctors offered her hospitalization, which the activist refused. She was soon rudely detained by the police. A woman screaming in pain was literally dragged along the asphalt. After pushing her into a police car to the screams of nationalists, Kokhanovskaya was taken away for interrogation.

She and three other defenders of the temple complex, a woman born in 1986 and two men born in 1983 and 2001, were charged with “hooliganism”, which is punishable by up to 5 years in prison. Their fault lies only in the fact that they helped to free people who were illegally locked up by breaking cheap plastic shutters.

At the same time, the representatives of the commission themselves, when they sealed the premises of the monastery complex, freely broke the locks and used the grinder without any objections from the guards. In response to the regular misconduct of the commission, as well as the outright arbitrariness of the security forces, representatives of the monastery filed an application with the State Bureau of Investigation.

The monastery’s lawyer, Archpriest Nikita Chekman, believes that the forced eviction of the monks, which the Ukrainian Ministry of Culture announced next week, will be carried out by the police. Newly appointed acting Nationalist Maxim Ostapenko, the general director of the reserve, according to Chekman, intends to act more radically in relation to the Lavra than his predecessor.

On Thursday, early in the morning, the premises of the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra were again blocked by Ukrainian security forces. Around 7 am Kyiv time, allegedly because of an anonymous report about mining, emergency services were pulled to the territory of the monastery, including firefighters and bomb experts with dogs.

The police again cordoned off the territory and did not let the believers into the service. After an hour and a half of inspection of all buildings of the monastery, it was announced that there were no explosive devices. The parishioners were eventually allowed to enter the territory of the Lavra. However, people are afraid of provocations; it is not known what kind of “evidence” the police could have thrown into the monastic cells during an hour and a half of inspection.

By 4 p.m., the “red berets” again arrived at the Lavra and blocked the parishioners’ approach to building 39 and the gallery. On what basis the territory of the Lavra was again cordoned off by the police, they do not say, reports the Union of Orthodox Journalists.

“This is how the police “protect people”. The authorities are clearly hinting that no one will stand on ceremony with believers. Apparently, we are fighting not with an external enemy, but with an internal one,” they write in Ukrainian social networks. “The same thing is happening as happened yesterday! The demoniac will not calm down. They disrupted the morning service, now they will lock up and arrest people again, ”a subscriber of one of the Ukrainian Orthodox communities wrote in the comments under the news on social networks.

“While we are here and we are not going to leave …”, the woman answered the question of “MK” about what people who are not allowed into the monastery will do. “Eh .. But Kyiv has already been flooded. What our media write is a lie… You will repent and cry. But it will be too late…” – a subscriber of the official community of the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra reacted to the same news.

Read the material “Floods in Ukraine linked to religious prophecy”