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Repressions against Orthodoxy begin to go beyond the borders of Ukraine
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.[REGNUM] For Moscow, repressions against Russian Orthodoxy in Ukraine are not only a purely religious problem, but also affect the prospects for a peaceful settlement in the country. In addition, protecting the rights of Ukrainian believers can become a model for protecting the rights of believers around the world.  “There are a lot of people in Ukraine who understand what is happening and give the right assessment, ” Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday, January 18, at a meeting with veterans of the Great Patriotic War, residents of besieged Leningrad and representatives of public patriotic associations. "Especially after what the modern rulers of Ukraine began to do with the civilian population, with the creation of the so-called detachments — they recreated, in fact, the detachments that were used during the Second World War — and with the Russian Orthodox Church. All this will not be in vain for them, I have no doubts." An unusually blunt statement for a normally reserved Russian president. First of all, with regard to the ecclesiastical issue, which has again become aggravated, as in the times of the Ruins, in Ukraine. Russian Orthodoxy and Russian statehood have gone hand in hand for centuries. In the east, Russian monks moved forward, and the state followed them. To the west, where the Orthodox found themselves in the hostile environment of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the indifference of the Ottoman Patriarchs of Constantinople, who de jure ruled the Kyiv Metropolitanate, things came later, in the 17th century, when religious questions forced people who did not want to enter into conflict with Warsaw over political and political issues to react. military considerations of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich. Born in the Tauride fonts of Chersonesos and Kyiv, Russian Orthodoxy was reunited in 1686, the canonical justification for which was the tomos on the transfer of the Kyiv Metropolis under the omophorion of the Moscow Patriarch from the Orthodox Church of Constantinople. However, in 2018–2019, the Administration of the President of Ukraine intervened in these sacred issues. Petro Poroshenko, Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople and the administration of US President Donald Trump . The Phanar pretended that the Tomos of 1686 was of no importance, and together with the Poroshenko regime acted as the creator of a “remake” under the name of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, whose creation was blessed in Washington. It would be easiest to reduce this intrigue to interchurch issues, canonical territories and the right to grant autocephaly. But for Moscow, this problem is existential in nature, as Vasily Nebenzya, Russia's permanent representative to this organization, spoke about during the January 17 meeting of the UN Security Council on the persecution of Orthodoxy organized by the Ukrainian authorities. "At the same time, I would like to emphasize that Russia continues to proceed from the fact that the issues of protecting human rights are not within the competence of the Security Council and should be discussed in the relevant UN body," - said the Russian diplomat in his opening speech. "On the agenda of the Council today is not human rights as a separate topic, but the next provocative steps of the Kyiv regime, which put off the prospect of a peaceful settlement in the country. Surely many of you wondered why we convened this meeting, which focused on the internal situation in Ukraine. We emphasize that this is not about interference in the affairs of the Church and not about purely church affairs. The fact is that we are convinced that the processes taking place in Ukraine are directly related to international peace and security and directly affect the prospects for establishing peace in this country ." Thus, the "Orthodox factor" acquires a geopolitical significance that determines the future of Ukraine. And not only her. For the first time at a meeting of the UN Security Council, the floor was given to the Russian Orthodox hierarch, who was the chairman of the department for external church relations of the Moscow Patriarchate, Metropolitan Anthony. And he began his speech with the following words: " At present, we are extremely concerned about flagrant violations of the universal and constitutional rights of Orthodox believers in Ukraine." Moscow puts the main emphasis on the persecution of religious freedoms, which, with the connivance of the West, allows itself the Kyiv regime and its repressive apparatus. It is no longer a matter of some kind of inter-church proceedings, the authoritarian Ukrainian state puts pressure on believers, forcing them to switch to a “politically correct” confession. This is seen outside Ukraine as well. "State terror is experiencing its peak literally in the last days," notes the Serbian Bishop of Bach Irinej . An illustration is not only the blasphemous invasion of the police and “security officers” into the greatest shrine of Ukraine and the entire Russian Orthodox world, the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra, but also the outlawing of the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church and the threat that, with God’s permission, “pro-European ” and the “democratically” oriented Ukrainian state will simply ban it, if not abolish it. It goes without saying that the virtuous representatives of democracy and human – including religious – rights and freedoms on both sides of the Atlantic are wisely silent .” In their opinion, in Kyiv they defend their “values” and “ideals” chivalrously (!) In addition to the United States, Poland is also interested in suppressing Russian Orthodoxy in Ukraine, hoping, as in the times of the Commonwealth, to “intercept” believers and use them for their own purposes. Unfortunately, some European national Catholic Churches also contribute to these processes, turning a blind eye to the state nature of the persecution of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. For Moscow, the repressions against Orthodoxy in Ukraine are beginning to go beyond that country alone. As Metropolitan Anthony noted in his speech, “The Russian Orthodox Church, both independently and in cooperation with other Orthodox Churches, the Catholic Church, Protestant denominations, representatives of the world’s traditional religions, takes all possible part in protecting the rights of believers all over the world, especially Christians .” This is an alternative to the Western approach, primarily the American one, which uses the topic of protecting religious freedoms in political interests. Posted by: badanov 2023-01-21 |
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