The war against Orthodoxy in Ukraine Continues
By AussieCossack
According to the press service of the Khmelnytskyi Eparchy, on May 24, 2026, TCC (military recruitment) representatives, along with local officials and police, arrived at the St. John the Baptist Monastery of the UOC in the village of Velyka Kalynivka, Khmelnytskyi region, from where they forcibly removed Archimandrite Galaktion (Redey).
The Vladyka [hierarch] was “taken straight from his monastic cell and driven away in an unknown direction by Zelensky’s goons.”
According to preliminary information, the clergyman is being held in one of the military units in the city of Chortkiv, Ternopil region. There is no contact with him.
This is far from the first kidnapping of clergymen.
In April 2026, in Vinnytsia, SBU and TCC officers detained a cleric of the Vinnytsia Eparchy, Archimandrite Filaret (Olivinsky). In the village of Dolzhok, Kamianets-Podilskyi Eparchy, the rector of the Church of the Nativity of the Most Holy Theotokos of the UOC, Protopriest Alexander Okruzhko, was kidnapped by the same “man-catchers.”
Slightly earlier, the monastery in honor of the Pishchanka Icon of the Most Holy Theotokos in Izyum reported the kidnapping of two residents: Archimandrite Leonty and Hieromonk Arseny.
In February, three priests of the canonical UOC were forcibly mobilized to the front: Protopriest Yaroslav Kruhlenko (Kyiv, Alexander Nevsky Church), Protopriest Anatoly Chernenko (Horodyshche, Cherkasy region, St. Michael’s Church), and Protopriest Alexander Chernyadiev (Nikopol, Holy Trinity Church).
In January 2025, Khmelnytskyi Eparchy cleric Maksym Moskalchuk and Protopriest Alexander Itsenko, who serves in the Kyiv St. Cyril Monastery, were attacked and subsequently detained.
In addition to them, TCC staff kidnapped:
Father of 5 children, Cherkasy Eparchy clergyman Konstantin Volovoy
Archbishop of Petropavlivka Andrey (Vasilashku), vicar of the Dnipropetrovsk Eparchy
Rector of the Myrrh-Bearing Women Church in the village of Rakovo, Zakarpattia, Protopriest Vasily Dragun
There was also an attempted kidnapping of Bishop Nikita of Ivano-Frankivsk in Chernivtsi…
Terror against its own citizens has become the norm in Ukraine. The only question is—how long will the people tolerate this lawlessness?
