Priest: Ukrainian Catholics flee Crimea to escape threats of arrest

[Tommy_Carcetti]

Snip:

http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/news/2014/03/25/priest-ukrainian-catholics-flee-crimea-to-escape-threats-of-arrest/

Members of the Ukrainian Catholic Church are fleeing Crimea to escape threats of arrest and property seizures, a priest has said.

“The situation remains very serious, and we don’t know what will happen — the new government here is portraying us all as nationalists and extremists,” said Father Mykhailo Milchakovskyi, a parish rector and military chaplain from Kerch, Crimea, who was speaking to the Catholic News Service just four days after Russia finalised the region’s annexation.

He said that officials from Russia’s Federal Security Service, or FSB, had called him in for questioning about his community and to ask whether he “recognised the new order.”

Father Milchakovskyi said that he and his family and at least two-thirds of his parishioners had left Kerch for Ukrainian-controlled territory on the advice of Ukrainian Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk of Kiev-Halych.
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If this is indeed true, it strongly echoes the persecution of the Ukrainian Catholic Church by the Soviet Union in the 1940s, where thousands of Ukrainian Catholics (including members of my own immediate family) were either harassed by authorities or deported to Siberia and other outlying regions.

[okaawhatever]

1. Sounds like the new authorities want to make sure there aren't any post-annexation protests.

One way to end discord is to remove all those who disagree with you. That is Soviet politics 101. Putin follows Andropov's policy in that regard.

[DetlefK]

2. Putin's regime is tight with the orthodox church.

A priest who might be critical of him is therefore a real nuisance.