Preparations are in full swing for an upcoming procession of the ROCinU on July 27. The organizers have openly declared their goal – to rehearse the disruption of Patriarch Bartholomew’s visit to Ukraine on the 30th anniversary of the country’s Independence, and explicitly warned of riots if the top cleric does arrive.
The ROCinU’s media mignons from among “Orthodox journalists” have labeled their fellow Orthodox believers with the OCU “antichrist’s servants.” Among parishioners, sentiments are being pumped against COVID-19 vaccination (by the way, in Russia, the ROCU is instead forcibly vaccinating priests and monks), the Information Resistance reports, citing Oleksiy Kopytko, a Ukrainian blogger.
On July 15, a congress of ROCinU monks was held in the Pochaiv Lavra. According to the official website of the denomination, the Congress was attended by governors, abbots, representatives of monasteries and sketes. Among others, the Congress was addressed by an infamous abbot Andriy Derkach (marked by an arrow in the photo), an exposed agent of Russian influence, who has been put on the U.S. sanctions list – perhaps for something other than his “theological achievements.”
On July 17, a meeting of the military leadership of Russia-controlled proxy forces in the so-called “Donetsk People’s Republic” was held in the occupied Maiyivka, attended by top clergy of the ROCinU’s Donetsk eparchy, including hierarchs from the Svyatogorsk Lavra and Mariupol. The agenda focused on preparations for the Rus Baptism Day celebrations.
At the earlier mentioned Congress in Pochaiv, Bishop Sylvester, rector of the Kyiv Theological Academy and Seminary in the ROCinU through a number of official ROCinU resources, presented a report on the “hostile nature” of Bartholomew and the role of the ROCinU in “settling the issue” in world Orthodoxy which they claim arose over Bartholomew’s actions.
Two weeks ago, the same individual, speaking on the air of Putin crony Viktor Medvedchuk’s TV channel went as far as ridiculously demand that Bartholomew ask permission in Moscow to visit Kyiv.
Also, the ROCinU-affiliated NGO Myriany are already checking their members’ “combat readiness” ahead of the rally, of which I wrote earlier.
I won’t even be commenting on the impact of dozens of thousands of antivaxxers being deployed in Kyiv for a mass event before returning to their home regions… However, this escalation on religious grounds must not go unnoticed. We have a specially trained State Service for Ethnopolitics and Freedom of Conscience. I’d like the agency to dispel my fears. That’s what it is supposed to do anyway.
