Local historian: UOC-KP brings seized monument of architecture to destruction

Law enforcement authorities did not react to multiple reports that the "repair work" in the Holy Cross Exaltation Church of the village of Ugrinov in the Gorokhov district of the Volyn region led to irreversible consequences for the architectural monument of the mid-19th century, reports coordinator of the National Heritage Protection Committee Igor Levchuk in the commentary to a UOJ correspondent.

"We collected materials on violations that comply with article 298 of the Criminal Code and forwarded them to the Prosecutor's Office of the Volyn region. For a few months, no response has been received, although they had to respond to a report on the crime by entering it into the Unified Register of Pre-trial Investigations," said the local historian.

According to Levchuk, he has already drawn attention of law enforcement officers to what is happening around the temple in Ugrinov several times. However, apparently, the incident is classified as of "church" nature, while it concerns exclusively the violation of the preservation of the monument.

"I saw the protocols in which funny things are written, as though the local residents had gathered and decided that there was nothing terrible here and the church was beautiful," Igor Levchuk said. According to him, if the UOC-KP or any other denomination turns a blind eye to it, it means that the church blesses raiding and the destruction of monuments.

The Volyn eparchy of the Kyiv Patriarchate has announced the completion of the three-year "repair" and "consecration" of the church. The completely modified monument of architecture in the message was modestly called "renewed". On November 19, 2017, the work of the head of the UOC-KP eparchy "Metropolitan" Mikhail Zinkevich personally accepted the rapairs and rewarded the chief "patron" of the event, deputy and businessman Andrei Turak.

Three years earlier, Turak, local authorities and officials had made it possible for representatives of the Kyiv Patriarchate to take over the Holy Cross Exaltation Church of the UOC of the village of Ugrinov.