Expert: Authorities with the head of Phanar provoked shameful actions
The creation of the OCU by Patriarch Bartholomew and Petro Poroshenko did not reduce the number of UOC believers but led to the seizure of churches, Yuri Dudkin said.
State interference in church issues and the creation of the OCU with the assistance of Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople did not lead to a noticeable decrease in the number of UOC believers, but provoked shameful seizures of churches, military and political expert Yuri Dudkin said on the air of the Pershy Nezalezhny TV channel.
He noted that the Ukrainian authorities regularly interfere in church issues, which began since the office of President Leonid Kravchuk, who initiated the division of Orthodoxy without the desire of the believers themselves. “Remember what was going on at the St. Sophia Cathedral when Kravchuk created Orthodoxy-splitting mayhem in Ukraine? ‘We must definitely separate from the Moscow Patriarchate’ was the decision of the authorities, rather than believers,” the expert said.
Dudkin said that Petro Poroshenko became the follower of the first President of Ukraine, who, together with the head of Phanar, caused another split by creating the OCU. It did not lead to a noticeable decrease in the number of believers in the UOC, but provoked shameful actions in the form of seizures of churches. “Today the number of believers in the UOC has not changed, there have been minor movements. But this provoked seizures of temples – it is such a shameful thing when some believers take away other people’s temples. Those temples, which served the parishioners for decades and were outside of politics, have become in the focus of politics,” the expert said.
As the UOJ reported, believers of the UOC held a prayer standing near the Verkhovna Rada demanding a meeting with Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople, who’d come to Ukraine at the invitation of President Vladimir Zelensky. The UOJ conducted a live broadcast of the prayer standing.
