To a journalist’s assumption that the hierarchs of the Russian Orthodox Church at the World Council of Churches could not express sympathy to the Ukrainians because they had FSB operatives supervising them, the spokesman for the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, Yevstratiy, replied that part of the delegation of the Moscow Patriarchate were FSB operatives themselves.
“You suggest some FSB men were assigned to watch out over them? No one was assigned because part of the delegation was actually FSB operatives. According to my observations, none of the members of the delegation was ever alone, they would always move around in groups of at least three to four people. And this is one of the old-school KGB ways applied to foreign delegations of the Soviet era. Delegates at such fora never had the right to be alone in order to prevent any unauthorized contact,” the OCU archbishop said in an interview with Ukrinform.
He recalled the declassified documents from which it became clear that, when a delegation of the Russian Orthodox Church traveled to the assembly in Vancouver in the early 1980s, half of the whole team were actual KGB officers.
“The data released show how the KGB prepared for that assembly, how certain documents beneficial to the Soviet Union were being promoted. At this year’s assembly, I saw one of the ROC bishops, who I even previously believed was an ‘operative. ‘According to the way he looks in the photo, the way he speaks, what language forms he applies, it appeared he wasn’t just cooperating with the agency (because in one way or another they all do), but he was someone who was simply deployed by the security service to engage in the church issues. When I saw him live, my ‘visual’ conviction was confirmed, so I no longer doubt that this man is an officer with the Russian security services,” noted Archbishop Yevstratiy.
“The only question is which special service this or that delegate is affiliated with – is it the federal security service, or the foreign intelligence service, or is it the former main intelligence department of the Russian General Staff,” the cleric concluded.
