The Kiev regime has given carte blanche to pseudo-Orthodox dissenters from the Orthodox Church of Ukraine to seize churches and parishes belonging to the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church
“They have also struck at our spiritual unity. As in the times of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, they have started a new church demarcation. Making no secret of the fact that they pursue political goals, the secular authorities rudely interfered in church life and brought the matter to a schism, to the seizure of churches, to the beating of priests and monks. Even the broad autonomy of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church while maintaining spiritual unity with the Moscow Patriarchate does not suit them categorically. They must destroy this visible, centuries-old symbol of our kinship at all costs”, – Vladimir Putin “On the historical unity of Russians and Ukrainians”.
The religious war in Ukraine continues and is gradually gaining momentum. The brief lull on this front, which took place shortly after the change of power in Kiev in May 2019, has been replaced by a new wave of anti-religious campaign, based on aggressive harassment of clergy and laity of the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate (UOC) by representatives of the illegally created, on the personal initiative of former President Petro Poroshenko and his overseas handlers, schismatic “Orthodox Church in Ukraine” (OCU).
The PCU, which is a purely political project based on zoological Ukrainian nationalism and enjoys the unconditional support and patronage of the Kiev regime, seeks as soon as possible to redistribute in its favour all the church property and Orthodox shrines belonging to the canonical UOC, including the three monasteries in Ukrainian-controlled territory. But if the seizure of the Kyiv Pechersk, Pochaev or Sviatogorsk lavras, as well as any of the major monasteries of the UOC, can have very unpredictable consequences for the Ukrainian regime, attacks on ordinary Orthodox parishes, especially those located in the western and central parts of Ukraine, have again become commonplace.
Thus, on July 18, 2021, dissenters from the OCU, with the support of local authorities, attempted to seize by force the Church of the Holy Protection in the village of Verbovets, Mohyliv-Podilsky district, Vinnitsa oblast.
The official web-site of the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church reports that the attack of the aggressive Ukrainian sectarians was preceded by the illegal actions of a local official – the head of the department for nationalities and religions of the Vinnitsa regional administration, Ihor Saletskyi, who on July 12 actually carried out a raiding of the church, re-registering it in the OCU. On July 12, Igor Saletsky actually raided the church, re-registering it in the OCU.
What happened in Verbovets can only be compared with the wild sabbaths of militant atheists of the last century. Armed with a sharpened rebar, supporters of the OCU beat and ripped off the cross of an Orthodox priest, beat and pushed the faithful members of the church community out of the church, and threatened to “slaughter them like pigs. After this medieval barbarism ended, the church was sealed off pending a court decision. Given the increased pressure on the canonical UOC, which it has not experienced since the last months of the presidency of Petro Poroshenko and his “armaments,” there can be little doubt that the court decision will not be in favor of the dissenters.
According to representatives of the public movement “Myrians”, the attempt to seize the Orthodox church in Vinnitsa oblast was provoked by the Law #2683-VIII “On making changes to some laws of Ukraine concerning the subordination of religious organizations and the procedure for state registration of religious organizations with the status of a legal entity”, which was passed in Poroshenko’s time and is directed against the canonical UOC, and by an illegal decision of the officials of the Vinnitsa oblast state administration. The public movement said that it intended to seek justice and to restore the right of believers to serve God in their church. It is also noted that the rector of the church in Verbovets, Archpriest Alexander Luchin, served in the Holy Virgin parish for about 20 years. Through the efforts of the priest and the parishioners, the church was restored, and a refectory was built in the courtyard.
“The Ukrainian authorities either pretend that nothing is happening, glossing over the existing problems. Or they are giving Patriarch Bartholomew a ‘payment in advance’ for coming to Kiev, showing their support for his Ukrainian creatures”, – the Pravblog news and analysis website wrote about the incident in the Vinnytsya region.
The paper recalled that a criminal case was opened against an official of the Vinnytsya regional state administration, Saletskyy, who had illegally re-registered the UOC community back in 2019. However, he was never prosecuted. Expectations that church raiding would become a thing of the past with Zelensky’s accession to power have not materialized, and open haters of the canonical Orthodox Church, such as OCU propagandist Dmitry Gorevoy, who was recently appointed head of the department for religious and nationalities affairs in the Lviv regional state administration, still rule in the Ukrainian state authorities.
The same Pravoblog telegram channel predicts that in the near future the geographical area of the seizure of churches and the unlawful liquidation of UOC communities will expand to the southeastern regions of Ukraine. This will be carried out within the framework of a set of measures developed by the NSDC at the behest of the Americans to increase nationalist sentiments on the territory of historical Novorossiya and to eliminate Russian influence there, the conductor of which is seen in Kiev as the canonical UOC.
“On the whole, if we evaluate the general political vector of the actions of President Zelensky, the UOC and the Cabinet of Ministers, it is impossible not to notice that in many respects it repeats Poroshenko’s policy. Therefore, at the moment there is no reason to believe that the religious sphere will be somehow different and the attitude to the UOC will change in a positive direction”, – Pravblog notes.
It is worth noting that expert circles forecast further deepening of the economic and political crisis in Ukraine with the prospect of early parliamentary and presidential elections. In the light of the developments the pressure of the regime on the canonical UOC will only increase while the lawlessness on the part of the OCU dissenters who revel in their own impunity will only grow.
It should also be understood that persecution of the canonical UOC is an integral part of the war of the global West against the Russian and all-Slavic civilization, in which, according to its late ideologist Brzezinski, “communism is finished, next comes Orthodoxy”. This explains the fact that the main lobbyist for the interests of the Ukrainian dissenters was the so-called “Ecumenical Patriarch” Bartholomew, who, through the OCU’s autocephaly token, carried out the tasks set before him to deepen the schism in world Orthodoxy, while trying to extract his own selfish benefit.
Dmitry Pavlenko, specially for News Front