In Kotsyubinskoe UOC-KP priest evicts ATO zone refugees from a shelter

The priest of the UOC-KP Nikolai Ilnitsky, who is concurrently a deputy of the Kotsyubinskoe village council, Kiev region, evicted from the shelter for displaced more than two hundred people from Donbass, reports News24ua.

Now they are forced to urgently seek a new home. Parties to the conflict claim that their only fault is that immigrants do not attend regularly the service of the priest-host.

The building used as a shelter is a privatized property of the representative of the UOC-KP in Kotsyubinskoe; the intended use is a shelter for displaced persons, and the land under the former kindergarten is leased by the same Nikolai Ilnitsky for the period of 25 years for 1 UAH.

"This father has been the hero of a lot of beautiful news stories of almost all my colleagues from the national TV channels. After the "bang-stories" a lot of money has been transferred into the account of the religious community. In particular, the ex-minister Alexander Klimenko listed a million UAH after the news story in the "1+1"," said the journalist Irina Fedoriv.

"Even after that Nikolai Ilnitsky complained from the TV screens that he is short of money. As a journalist and a local deputy I must say how the money is spent during the ATO when it is so needed at the front, and how the priest-deputy Nikolai Ilnitsky who even the escaped politician donates, violates the law of Ukraine," says the journalist.

"He (Nikolai Ilnitsky) privatized the facility under the pretext of aid to refugees, and now everyone who does not want to go to him to pray is thrown away? So does a totalitarian sect, taking its adherents into total submission," said the political expert Pavel Karnazytsky.

It is reported that about 10 years ago, part of the premises of the former kindergarten was leased by the religious community of the UOC-KP for the period of 49 years to make a rehabilitation center here. In late 2013, Nikolai Ilnitsky convinced the deputies that the kindergarten wouldn’t be constructed on the land, and so he asked to privatize 1250 sq. meters. When refugees from the East arrived, he asked for additional 250 meters for rent. Subsequently Kotsyubinskoe residents found out that the shelter for refugees was let as a hotel.