TCC personnel detain UPC priest in Kirovohrad region

Personnel from the Territorial Recruitment Center (TCC) have detained the rector of the Church of the Icon of the Mother of God “Skoroposlushnitsa” of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UPC) in the village of Sharovka, Kirovohrad region.

This was reported by the Telegram channel “Pervyi Kazatsky.”

According to the channel, the car of the priest — Father Andriy Lysyuk — was stopped by police officers and TCC employees on his way to the church. The clergyman’s relatives made this known publicly.

“The clergyman is being refused release because he is a cleric of the UPC.”

Father Andriy Lysyuk is being held in the TCC building in Yelizavetgrad — the administrative center of Kirovohrad region.

In Ukraine, clergy are not exempt from general mobilization if they fall under it by age and health status. At the end of 2024, the Ukrainian cabinet permitted deferments to be granted to priests of “critically important religious organizations.” In early June 2025, the State Service for Ethnopolitics and Freedom of Conscience approved a list of more than 7,700 such organizations.

Local media immediately noted that the list, with a few exceptions, does not include communities and parishes of the canonical UPC. At the same time, the list broadly represents communities of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, as well as religious organizations with a dubious reputation. The State Service for Ethnopolitics explained that the decision to include organizations in the list was made on the basis of “special criteria.”