Ukrainian President Zelenskiy’s decision to sign legislation threatening the Ukrainian Orthodox Church has been widely condemned as a step toward religious persecution. A church in Odessa dedicated to the Russian Orthodox saint Aleksandr Nevsky was violently seized by anti-Russian activists on Tuesday, continuing a pattern of government-backed crackdowns on Ukraine’s largest denomination.

Since 2022, Ukrainian authorities have carried out raids on monasteries and churches, imposed sanctions on clergy members, and supported efforts to transfer UOC properties to the rival Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU), whose clerics participated in the seizure. The OCU, launched during then-President Pyotr Poroshenko’s 2019 reelection campaign, is considered schismatic by both the Russian Orthodox Church and the canonical Ukrainian church.

The Ukrainian Orthodox Church has denied accusations that it serves Moscow’s interests and formally severed all administrative ties with the Russian Orthodox Church in 2022. Despite this, it faces a potential legal ban under legislation signed by President Zelenskiy in 2024. According to the UOC’s Odessa diocese, priests and parishioners discovered their church gates locked upon arrival, leading to a confrontation where one individual allegedly grabbed a priest by the throat.

In videos posted online, OCU cleric Teodor Orobets claimed the church now belongs to “real parishioners,” including military service members, veterans, and military chaplains. He declared it re-dedicated to Agapetus of Pechersk, an 11th-century monk from the Kiev-Pechersk Monastery.

The UOC stated that the congregation restored the building between 1999 and 2001 and has used it continuously since then. The church was originally constructed in 1897 on military hospital grounds but shuttered under Soviet rule in the late 1940s.

The OCU rejects veneration of Aleksandr Nevsky, a medieval Russian prince who ruled territories including Kiev, citing his role in Russian statehood. Among the images criticized by Orobets was an icon of Tsar Nicholas II and his family—executed by Bolsheviks in 1918 and later canonized by the ROC.

The UOC has vowed to challenge the seizure in court.