Wrong fakes of "Right" channel about UOC
The UOJ has conducted its own inquiry into negative information about the UOC procession participants, which was disseminated in mass media after Cross Procession-2018.
The celebrations of the anniversary of the Baptism of Rus have come to an end in Ukraine.
The Cross procession of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church was held alongside the procession of the Kiev Patriarchate.
Over the last years we got accustomed to the fact that state officials and journalists, when giving their comments on the procession of the Ukrainian Church, would often resort to insults and threats. This year it looks somewhat different. Now the government has launched a scheme for legalization of the Kiev Patriarchate and the UAOC under the guise of the so-called Local Church.
The authorities have set a global task before the cross procession – by all means to reduce the number of the UOC cross procession walkers and increase the number of people at the procession of the UOC-KP. The goal is to demonstrate to Constantinople the mass character of supporters of schismatic groups.
As for the believers of the canonical Church, who managed to get to the procession on July 27, the task was to discredit and present them as marginals, who’d come to the procession only for money.
Let's see how these technologies worked.
A few days before the festivities of the Baptism of Rus mass messages from the priests of the UOC from all regions of Ukraine were received that local authorities were blocking the departure of believers to Kiev. The carriers were threatened and forced to give up preliminary agreements with the UOC on transportation to Kiev.
At the same time, there were similar mass reports that local authorities, by instructions from Kiev, were driving state employees to the event of the Kiev Patriarchate on July 28. Many people were simply offered to go to Kiev for free as tourists, the only condition being participation in the procession of the Kiev Patriarchate.
The media, instructed by the authorities, launched a campaign against the believers of the UOC with the help of fakes. Why fakes? Let's make it out.
Immediately after the religious procession, a video appeared on the Net, where a man who called himself a monk from Pochaev Lavra tells that it a sin to fight for Ukraine, while the Ukrainian language is ugly and secondary.
Naturally, this video caused thousands of indignant comments.
But no one remembered that this imaginary Pochaev monk most recently called himself a priest of the Kiev Patriarchate and together with a group of radicals even committed a blasphemous moleben in the Assumption Cathedral of the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra.
Yet the most resonant fake videos against the UOC were disseminated by the two pro-presidential channel – Priamoy and Piatyi ("Right" and "Fifth"). Here we can see the people walking with the portraits of Tzar Nicholas and Patriarch Kirill, and later receive 200 hr for their participation in the cross procession.
We can see journalists savoring these shots and telling with delight about greed of the UOC believers.
The journalists were not at all embarrassed by the fact that those distributing and receiving money were not at all ashamed of their actions, posed for cameras and willingly told they had received their UAH 200 for participation in the cross procession.
Many of these women were wearing trousers and did not look at all like believers, whom we could see at the Cross procession. Rather, they resembled randomly recruited people on the street. And if you look closely, the person in black shorts and a backpack that can be spotted on all shots attracts particular attention. Short searches revealed it is Anna Snitko. She has been earning money for many years doing exactly what we saw in this scene – the organization of extras for cinema, television and political actions.
She is especially skilled with grandmothers.
This kind of occupation is also confirmed by publications on her Facebook page: the organization of mass rallies for political actions.
Therefore, there is no doubt that money distribution sketches is a theatrical production with the involvement of random people. And it was organized by representatives of the same channels, which later heavily published this video stuff. These channels are very much linked to the name of President Petro Poroshenko, who, being highly enthusiastic about an idea of the Local Church, now pointedly stakes on the Kyiv Patriarchate and is very critical of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. Is all this accidental, a turn of events or a carefully designed tactic? It’s up to everyone to decide.
