Rallies held outside the parliament and the president’s office in Kyiv by a pro-Russian Myriany NGO and the Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine against the visit of Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew in fact reflect the views of a minority of ROCinU’s followers.
The evidence came with the latest poll run by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology this June.
Among the faithful of the Moscow Patriarchate in Ukraine, only 14.6% stand against Bartholomew’s upcoming visit to Ukraine on the 30th anniversary of the country’s Independence.
At the same time, 49% of ROCinU followers assess the trip positively, while another 32.5% are neutral about it.
Among all respondents, the majority of Ukrainians (57%) share a positive attitude toward Patriarch Bartholomew’s visit to Ukraine. Another 32.5% have a neutral attitude, while only 6% assess it negatively. Nearly 4% of those surveyed found it difficult to answer the question.
Among followers of certain denominations, those of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine and the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (72% and 63%, respectively) praise the upcoming visit the most.
Thus, ROCinU’s statements claiming that the majority of Ukrainians share a negative attitude to the visit of Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew are proved to be blatant lies. The ROCinU is trying to exploit the opinion of a minority of its own followers to destabilize Ukraine in line with the so-called “Montenegrin scenario”, using a religious factor.
