DESS – UOC: You are being deceived that the state wants to take away your temples
The DESS assured UOC parishioners that the authorities do not seek to force them to transfer to the OCU.
On June 15, 2026, after the shelling of the Assumption Cathedral of the Kiev Pechersk Lavra, the State Service for Ethnopolitics published an appeal to "the hierarchy, clergy, monks and laypeople of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church" calling to "withdraw from the Moscow Patriarchate, which has long been justifying evil, child murder and blasphemy."
"Brothers and sisters Ukrainians – faithful of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church! You are being crudely and continuously deceived by claims that the Ukrainian state wants to confiscate your churches and property," stated the agency headed by Viktor Elensky.
The authors of the appeal also assured that "it is a lie that the state demands the Ukrainian Orthodox Church become part of another Church."
How all this relates to the authorities' actions in expelling monks, clergy and UOC communities from their historic churches and assisting the OCU in church seizures is not clarified in the statement.
Earlier, the Union of Orthodox Journalists reported that the State Service for Ethnopolitics and Freedom of Conscience intends to file lawsuits against every diocese of the UOC.
