Metropolitan Mytrofan of Horlivka and Sloviansk with the so-called “UOC-MP” (Russian Orthodox Church of Ukraine), the church pretending to be “independent”, received a “blessing from the Moscow Patriarch”, who had previously blessed the killing of Ukrainians,” to take part in organizing the evacuation of civilians from the Azovstal plant in Mariupol, the last stronghold of the Ukrainian defenders in town.
This was announced on Telegram by the head of the ROCinU Synodal Department for Public and Media Relations, Vladimir Legoida.
“With the blessing of […] Patriarch Kirill of Moscow […], Metropolitan Mitrofan of Horlivka and Sloviansk took part in organizing the evacuation of civilians, being among the first to meet those who got out,” Legoida wrote. He added that the ROC had previously participated in prisoner swap efforts and other humanitarian missions.
Thus, the occupiers allow access to Mariupol for only those loyal to them, their allies, that is, representatives of the Moscow Patriarchate in Ukraine, namely the bishops who serve in the terrorist pseudo-republics of “LPR/DPR.”
It should be noted that on July 7, 2017, Metropolitan Mytrofan (Nikitin) under the flags of the “DPR” held a prayer service for the fallen “militants” and consecrated a monument commemorating them in Horlivka, the town occupied by Russian proxy forces.
In 2020, Mytrofan stated that the UOC-MP cannot divide believers into criminals and the righteous, the loyal ones and the others, treat them not as enemies but as a single flock, and through its voice certain messages can be conveyed and certain sincere steps could be offered.” He also claimed that people in the “DPR/LPR” “don’t want war.” However, this logic works only against Ukrainians, as the head of the Moscow Patriarchate divides people into the loyal ones and all others, into “Nazis in Ukraine” and supporters of the “Russian world.”
It is also interesting to note that the Metropolitan of the “independent” UOC-MP took part in the evacuation with the “blessing”, i.e. the permission, of the bloody Cyril (Gundyaev), who justifies Russia’s military aggression in Ukraine. The Russian media wrote that it was the ROC that took part in the mission, without mentioning the UOC at all. In other words, for Russians, the UOC-MP is a part of the ROC, which in the media should be represented no differently than the Russian Church. The “Ukrainian Church” has long been forgotten there, and only in unoccupied parts of Ukraine do representatives of the ROC fool trusting people that they are allegedly the Ukrainian Church and oppose the change of their title to the ROCinU.
