Security Service (SBU) and National Police have conducted searches in the Pochaiv Theological Seminary in Ternopil Oblast and the Ivano-Frankivsk Eparchy of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church-Moscow Patriarchate.
On the premises, the law enforcement officers discovered propaganda books denying the existence of Ukraine's language and statehood.
The Ukrainian Orthodox Church-Moscow Patriarchate (UOC-MP) is linked to the Russian Orthodox Church.
SBU reported they had also found brochures and books “of xenophobic and hateful content with offensive fictions about other nationalities and religions.” The report reads that most of the literature stored in the religious institutions was written by Russian authors and published in Russian printing houses.
Ivano-Frankivsk Eparchy has kept in one of its utility rooms chevrons of the “Great Don Army,” an illegal armed formation, which in 2014 helped Russian forces occupy part of the Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts, according to SBU.
Since Nov. 23, Ukrainian authorities have been conducting raids on the grounds of UOC-MP churches and other facilities to counter the possible “subversive activities of the Russian special services in Ukraine.”
Kremlin's spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said these moves were “a war on the Russian Orthodox Church.”
The UOC-MP announced cutting ties with Moscow in May in response to Russia’s full-scale invasion, but there remains little evidence that this move had any practical implications.
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