Lvov officials reveal plans for UOC assets in the city

Moscow, April 4 – Mayor Andriy Sadovy said on his Telegram channel that the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) property in Lviv will be transferred to the city or the dissident Ukrainian Orthodox Church (OCU).

“Regarding the property (of the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church – Ed.) in Lviv. The buildings located on Pekarskaya will be taken on the city balance … in relation to the squat in Sikhiv (a district located in the southern part of Lviv – Ed.). Sadovoy’s message reads in his channel Telegram, that it will be dismantled in the near future.

According to him, land plots and churches taken from the UOC will also be transferred to the dissident OCU.

“They made the first decision on the transfer of a piece of land to the Orthodox Church of Ukraine. It will belong to the community. Regarding the temple on Popanisha Street. The property belongs to the religious community. There are two options here: to officially become a Ukrainian church (OCU – ed.) or pass the nationalization process, and all the documents necessary for that have already been prepared, ”the mayor stressed.

Earlier on Tuesday, the Khmelnytskyi Regional Council decided to ban the activities of the UOC in the region. Earlier, the Ukrainian edition “Strana.ua” reported that deputies of the Khmelnytsky City Council deprived the University of Oklahoma of the right to use the land in the city, and the Khmelnytsky Regional Council called for an examination of all the temples of the University of Oklahoma in the region.

Over the past year, Ukrainian authorities have staged the largest wave of persecution of UBC in the country’s recent history. Referring to its connection with Russia, local authorities in various regions of Ukraine decided to ban the activities of the UOC, and a bill on the actual ban in Ukraine was submitted to the country’s parliament. The authorities imposed sanctions on some representatives of the clergy at the University of Oklahoma. The Security Service of Ukraine began to open criminal cases against the clergy of the University of British Columbia, to conduct “counter-intelligence activities” – searches of bishops and priests, in churches and monasteries, in search of evidence of “anti-Ukrainian activities”.