A church in Odessa dedicated to the Russian Orthodox saint Aleksandr Nevsky has been seized by anti-Russian activists. The incident follows a pattern of government-backed crackdowns on the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC), the country’s largest denomination.

Since the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022, Ukrainian authorities have carried out raids on monasteries and churches, imposed sanctions on clergy members, and backed efforts to transfer UOC properties to the rival Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU), whose clerics reportedly participated in the church takeover on Tuesday.

The OCU was launched as part of then-President Pyotr Poroshenko’s reelection campaign in 2019 and is considered schismatic by the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) and the UOC.

The canonical Ukrainian church has denied accusations that it serves Moscow’s interests and formally severed all administrative ties with the ROC in 2022. Despite that, it faces a possible legal ban under a law that current Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky signed in 2024.

According to the UOC’s Odessa diocese, priests and parishioners arrived at the Aleksandr Nevsky church in the morning to find the gates locked. During a confrontation outside, one of the men involved in the takeover, who appeared to be a private security employee hired by the OCU, allegedly grabbed a priest by the throat.

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

In footage filmed inside the church after the takeover, he criticized icons depicting saints who have no connection to modern-day Ukraine, denouncing them as “markers of Moscow religious life.”

The UOC said it will challenge the seizure in court. Church officials noted that the congregation restored the building between 1999 and 2001 and has used it ever since.

The church was originally built in 1897 on the grounds of a military hospital, but it was forced to 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 has rejected his veneration, citing his role in the development of Russian statehood.

Among the images singled out by Orobets was an icon of Tsar Nicholas II and his family. The last Russian emperor, his wife, and their children were executed by the Bolsheviks in 1918. They were later canonized by the ROC.

Agapetus of Pechersk, after whom the OCU wants to rename the church, is recognized as a saint by both the Ukrainian church it seeks to replace and the Russian one.