On August 24, 2021, it is safe to say that this year’s celebration of the 30th anniversary of Ukraine’s Independence is a colossal failure of Russian diplomacy and propaganda.
In addition to the fact that the very existence of a sovereign and independent Ukraine is an incredibly painful fact for the Kremlin, Russia, employing enormous financial resources, pro-Russian politicians, and adepts of the “Russian world” in Ukraine, failed to disrupt the visit of Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I. Moreover, frantic blackmail, pressure, and threats from the Russian Federation did not deter Ukraine’s allies in the international arena from participating in the Crimea Platform inaugural Summit.
In this situation, the Putin regime has no choice but to insidiously shell the positions of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in Luhansk and Donetsk regions, as well as to set up dirty information provocations aimed at compromising the Ukrainian government and the autocephalous Orthodox Church of Ukraine.
In this effort, Russian propagandists believe they succeed in manipulating the theses about the “revival of Nazism in Ukraine” and “Western handlers playing up to the Ukrainian Nazism.”
Realizing the inevitability of the process of formation and development of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine and convinced of the unwavering support of the Ecumenical Patriarchate and a number of world local Orthodox churches, the Kremlin resorted to tactics of desecrating Ukraine’s historical path to its own autocephalous Orthodox Church.
On the eve of Ukraine’s Independence Day, Russian propagandists widely covered the declassified archives of the Russian Federal Security Service, which surprisingly included evidence of theUkrainian autocephalous Orthodox Church being “created” by Hitler’s administration during the occupation of Ukraine in 1941-1944.
Russian propaganda emphasized Feofil Buldovsky’s interrogation report by the state security agencies of the Soviet Union. During the German occupation, he was Metropolitan of Kharkiv and the entire Left Bank of Ukraine and head of the Kharkiv Diocesan Department of the Autocephalous Ukrainian Orthodox Church. Excerpts from the report were published by Lenta.ru.
In October 1941, after the occupation of Kharkiv, Archpriest Oleksandr Kryvomaz informed Buldovsky that a religious department had been set up under the Kharkiv City Council to revive the autocephalous UOC with the permission of the Germans.
Feofil Buldovsky decided to lead the process of revival of the autocephalous church. During interrogation, he claimed that from the very onset he oriented himself toward Nazi occupiers.
Also, the Soviet state security agencies obtained from the Buldovsky a confession claiming that the sermons of a pro-fascist nature were recited in the diocese’s churches of, glorifying the German army that “liberates” Ukraine, Hitler, and his government.
Also, declassified documents of the FSB state that the autocephalous UOC restored by the Nazis served German propaganda.
In turn, it should be recalled that Metropolitan Feofil Buldovsky was actually sentenced to death after his arrest. The bishop died in captivity on January 20, 1944.
We believe that there is no need to explain why these documents suddenly “surfaced” on the eve of Ukraine’s Independence Day. Identifying the Ukrainian government with the Nazis (not only the fifth president, Petro Poroshenko, but also the incumbent Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky), Russian propaganda calls for the revival of Nazism in Ukraine, and the newly created OCU is being portrayed as a servant of Nazism.
So there’s no point in talking of how the Soviet state security agencies traditionally got the necessary incriminating evidence from citizens. Each of the interrogated, sooner or later, agreed to sign whatever was handed to them by the KGB. Therefore, the latest anti-Ukrainian propaganda stunt by Russia didn’t work out.
