Police – to UOC cleric in Novaya Moshchanitsa: Call when being killed

Archpriest Igor Gnatishin. Photo: spzh.news

The officials of the National Police of Ukraine sent a letter to Natalia Gnatishina, a wife of the UOC clergyman from the village of Novaya Moshchanitsa in the Rovno region, informing her of “the termination of considering applications due to the unwillingness to provide information.” The family of Archpriest Igor Gnatishin reported this to a UOJ correspondent.

The small family is embarrassed and puzzled with a letter from law enforcement officials because for more than six months the clergyman and his relatives have lived in fear due to daily conflicts.

The Gnatishins said that the religious community of the OCU not only seized the Church of the Nativity of the Theotokos, which had previously belonged to the UOC but also increased psychological pressure on Archpriest Igor and his relatives to make them leave their native village.

“In fact, because of regular visits of the drunken to our yard, I began to contact the police. There were a lot of these appeals, I’ve already lost track. The police arrived, sometimes even intervened in arguments, recorded everything that was happening, took evidence, and now they cynically tell us in a letter that I refused to communicate,” said Mother Natalya. “After numerous calls to the police, they even stopped responding to me and once I heard on the phone: “Are they killing you? No? When they kill you, then call.”

The Gnatishins were outraged by the outright lies of the police officers and emphasized that they were ready to provide video and audio evidence to other structures that could establish justice in the village and bring to justice people regularly threatening to kill the clergyman’s family for their religious faithfulness.

The UOJ correspondent asked the head of the Zdolbunov Police Department A.V. Kushak for clarification regarding a letter addressed to Natalya Gnatishina, however, the response to the appeal was the refusal to give any comments.

Earlier in Novaya Moshchanitsa, because of the persecution, the laity of the UOC were forced to move their children to another school. “This is a necessary measure because the main initiators of the seizure of our church are teachers, they have kept our priest’s family in tension for the third month in a row, incite the village, and persuade local men to show aggression. And this weekend, when during a clash in the yard of the father OCU supporters beat up the man who came to defend the priest, the teachers recorded this violence on the phone,” said one of the mothers.

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