"All my friends and acquaintances that I talk to feel threatened because the churches are being taken away from them. And what could be more threatening than them coming to you and taking away what belongs to the Church of Christ? And they don't take it away for anyone, they take it away for nothing. No one goes there, they don't even have parishioners," he said in an interview.
The Ukrainian authorities are not simply trying to drive the canonical UOC out of the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra — their task is to transfer the Lavra to the schismatic OCU, the bishop added.
"Their [Ukrainian authorities] very task is to transfer [the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra] to the OCU. After all, they do need some kind of Church. They cannot position themselves as theomachists or atheists, although they are, but they cannot say so openly, they do it through the OCU," he said.
Tensions between the Ukrainian government and the UOC escalated after Russia launched its special military operation in Ukraine in February 2022. UOC monks were ordered to leave the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra, jurisdiction over which is divided between the National Kiev-Pechersk Historical and Cultural Preserve, a Ukrainian cultural organization, and the UOC, for allegedly violating the terms of the lease. Ukrainian Culture Minister Oleksandr Tkachenko then said that the monks could stay in the Lavra if they joined the OCU. Lavra monks slammed the unilateral eviction order as illegal as it was not backed by a court decision.
In April, Tkachenko said that the Ukrainian Culture Ministry had formed a commission to look into the use of state property pertaining to the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra.