The tragic persecution of the Ukrainian faithful and denial of their right to worship as they choose triggers the slightest notice or arouses the concern of “human rights” and “rule of law” advocates.
Improvised new religious systems regularly accompany hare-brained Western “nation building” schemes. Montenegro and Macedonia [now “northern,” of course] could be cited as examples. The Ukraine is no exception. The formation, beginning in 2014, of an active Ukrainian “anti-Russia,” to use Nikolay Starikov’s apt expression, could not be completed without concocting its own pseudo-ecclesiastical infrastructure. We outlined that process some time ago (and here).
Essentially, in the implementation of the Ukrainian religious operation the office of the Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarch in Constantinople played a key role. Going back almost a century, the patriarchal office has in the theological sense been filled by Western stooges. But in the nitty-gritty political and intelligence sense, its vassalage, encompassing a close working relationship with NATO political centers and Western special services, dates back to at least the period immediately following World War II.
That cosy relationship bore ample fruit after the Ukrainian crisis was exacerbated in the aftermath of the 2014 Maidan coup. The radical reconfiguration of the Ukraine as a NATO arsenal and forward post strategically situated on Russia’s border presupposed certain factors of social cohesion that could hold it together. One of those factors was the whipping up of extreme Ukrainian nationalism. It was given particular impetus by the massive and multigenerational influx of World War II Ukrainian Nazi collaborators and their descendants who had taken refuge in the U.S., Canada and other Western countries while waiting for their hour to strike. The other factor was the calculated intrusion of the Ecumenical Patriarch, at his curators’ behest, and after receiving a hefty bakshееsh from the Poroshenko government, into the chaotic Ukrainian religious situation. While the majority of Ukrainians remain faithful to the autonomous Ukrainian Orthodox Church which is in communion with the Moscow Patriarchy, there are numerous competing splinter groups operating without canonical recognition. The brilliant hare-brained idea of Western “experts” was to consolidate these canonically irregular factions around an equally illegitimate hierarch who would then be anointed by our old friend, the self-presumed Orthodox “Eastern Pope” in Constantinople. And voilà!, now you’ve got your native religion to go along with the nationalist fervour and political megalomania. All the building blocks of the “new nation” are thus nicely in place.
It passed largely unnoted, but the recent rise in tensions and NATO Ukraine’s bellicose behaviour on the political and military fronts was anticipated late last year by a quiet visit paid to Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew by Ukrainian Prime Minister Dinis [Denis, presumably] Schmygal, on 30 November 2020. It is reported that Schmygal was accompanied by several other cabinet ministers as well as some clergy from the canonically dubious church structure known as the “Orthodox Church of Ukraine” (OKU), the very same outfit which Schmygal’s host had recently decreed into existence.
According to a well-informed German source, “more details about the meeting have only recently become known. The Ukrainian Prime Minister has assured the Constantinople Hierarch that Kiev is ready to implement all measures required by the Constantinople Patriarchate to strengthen the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OKU). This includes the official support of the OKU and the guarantee of congregational transfers from the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church (OUK) to the canonically disputed OKU. In January 2019, the Patriarch of Constantinople, Bartholomew, ‘recognized’ the OKU, newly founded from several schismatic churches, by awarding it a tomos – which is a church charter. In the opinion of most other Orthodox churches, he has thus exceeded his competencies as ‘first among equals’.”
In the “opinion of most”, that much is correct, but to be exact not all Orthodox churches because the Ecumenical Patriarchy has been frantically busy arm-twisting wherever possible to gain some semblance of legal recognition for its illegitimate Ukrainian progeny, much as its Western directors have been doing on behalf of their Kosovo entity. So far, the Patriarchy has scored some successes with the Greek and Alexandrian, as well as partially with the Cypriot, Orthodox Churches.
But the disclosure about these high-level talks that is of the greatest interest by far, especially in light of the border provocations which subsequently took place during the first months of this year, is the Ukrainian side’s apparent commitment to their patriarchal host. It is, no less, than to accelerate by state interference the transfer of parishes from the canonically established church in the Ukraine to the canonically problematic agglomeration of schismatic factions to which Bartholomew awarded a veneer of legitimacy in 2019. It does not require much analytical sophistication to see clearly the operation of the identical political mind-set which inspired in the recent weeks the projected use of force to “solve” the Donbass and even the Crimean situations.
Indeed, completely ignored by globalist media, a deliberately instigated religious war has been raging in the Ukraine since the 2014 coup. That has, in fact, recently been reaching crescendo and in visible coordination with plans for forceful NATO-Ukrainian interventions on the military and political fronts that were simultaneously being laid.
In the poignant film that follows, the appalling situation on the ground is eloquently portrayed:
The tragic persecution of the Ukrainian faithful, forcible takeover of their parishes, the systematic despoiling of their property, and denial of their right to worship as they choose, all of which is everyday reality in the NATO colony of Ukraine – none of that triggers the slightest notice or arouses the concern of “human rights” and “rule of law” advocates. Least of all does it perturb anyone at the Office of International Religious Freedom.
