Pticha (a village of the Ukraine’s Rivne region), April 20, 2015
According to head of the Rivne Diocese’s (the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate) press service, there is a new wave of provocations against canonical Orthodox clergy in the Rivne region, reports the Pravlife.org portal.
Thus, unidentified people punctured tires of cars parked near a church. Also, law-enforcement authorities for no reason whatsoever have now detained at least one Orthodox priest.
All this happened on April 20 in the Pticha village where Orthodox believers were permitted to celebrate a service at the Church of the Dormition of the Mother of God that earlier had been seized by schismatics from “the Kyiv Patriarchate”.
“The police were guarding us. One of our priests left the territory of the church as he saw some unknown people puncturing tires of the cars parked nearby,” reported Fr. Vitaly Buga, a clergyman of the Rivne Diocese, to the portal.
“The priest just left the church grounds… No harm was done to the culprits, while handcuffs were put on our priest and he was forced into car. I attempted to thread my way through the crowd and to help him, but a police officer hit me with his police baton on my left arm and said that should I go beyond the church precincts they would make short work of me,” he said.
