Recently, Russian narratives about the “persecution of the UOC (MP) and national minorities” began to spread in the Romanian media. They were launched into the Romanian media space by the former lawmaker with the Liberal Democratic Party, Vișan Gelu, who, on live air of Romania TV, directly accused the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, of “persecuting the UOC”, “destroying churches” and “banning Romanians in Ukraine from speaking Romanian.”
Quote:
“This scoundrel Zelensky, whose citizens we met with flowers, kneeling and crying, who have already been allocated 500 million euros to travel, and who I defended for nothing, destroys a hundred Romanian churches and forbids the Romanian language in church. Do you hear, scoundrel Zelensky, how long will our people endure all that you are doing, forbidding Romanians to speak the Romanian language? Go on the air on România TV with me – I’m not a Putinist.
We Romanians spend hundreds of millions of euros on him, we allow him to transport tanks and all weapons through our territory, and he kills our Romanians. He sent secret services to 40 churches to look for spies. It is not normal to apply a knife to a priest, to pour paint over him. You take away the last remaining faith from people. People are forced to gather in other places because they are arrested and searched. Even during the time of the Inquisition, this never happenned.”
Visan Gelu stated during a live broadcast that the vicar of the Chernivtsi-Bukovyna Diocese, UOC (MP), Metropolitan Longin (Zhar) was “poisoned by the Ukrainian special services” and demanded that the Romanian authorities stop funding Ukraine.
“Patriarch Daniel and the authorities of Romania should take measures and stop giving money to Ukraine,” said the Romanian ex-deputy.
In addition to his statement on television, Visan Gelu on social networks said that “representatives of the Ukrainian secret service took the icons out to the backyard and set them on fire” and that “Ukrainians are setting Romanian churches on fire.”
Not surprisingly, these messages, spread by the Romanian ex-deputy, coincide with the narratives spread in the speech by the Russian representative in the UN Security Council about the “oppression of the Orthodox Church and national minorities.”
