The head of Ukraine’s recently independent Orthodox Church has compared Russia’s treatment of believers in annexed Crimea to “Stalin-era” repressions, after authorities ordered a church demolished.

Metropolitan Epiphaniy, the primate of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, said believers in Crimea and the east of the country had particularly suffered at the hands of Russia since the Ukrainian Orthodox Church was granted independence in 2018, to the fury of Moscow.

“In Crimea, the Russian authorities, the temporary authorities, are trying to completely supplant us,” he said in an interview ahead of Orthodox Christmas on January 7.

Officials are trying to evict the congregation from the peninsula’s Ukrainian cathedral and at the end of last year ordered the “absurd” destruction of another church building in Crimea, he said.

“This is reminiscent of the Stalin-era of the USSR, when churches were destroyed,” he told Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty in a Ukrainian-language interview.

Epiphaniy said he had raised the issue on a recent trip to the United States and had asked the international community to condemn Russia’s actions.