The Deputy Head of the External Relations Department at the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate), Archpriest Mykola Danylevych, accused the faithful of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine of contributing to the start of the war. He stated that it is not Russia that is to blame for the war, but the OCU.
Such audacious accusations on the part of the UOC-MP caused a stormy reaction among Ukrainians across social media, the Spiritual Front of Ukraine reports.
“In religious terms, evil was brought to Ukraine by those who seized our churches and thereby gave Putin the relevant picture. Those who passed laws against the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (MP, – ed.), and thereby gave Putin this picture. They played this game and they lost,” wrote Danylevych.
Archbishop Yevstratiy (Zorya) of Chernihiv and Nizhyn (OCU) commented on the said statement via Facebook.
He expressed his indignation at the fact that the representatives of the Moscow church feel on responsibility for their propaganda of the “Russian world” and shift the blame for the start of the war to people who, on the contrary, fought for the independence of the Ukrainian church from Moscow.
“This is so that you, dear audience, understand the moods at the top of the Moscow Patriarchate in Ukraine. They do not feel any responsibility for the propaganda of the ‘Russian world,’ for supporting pro-Kremlin politicians of all stripes – from Yanukovych to Murayev. They do not understand the cause-and-effect relationship between their ‘our Patriarch Kirill’ and his blessing for Russian troops to kill Ukrainians. The war in Ukraine was called upon, in their opinion, by those who had opposed the Kremlin, MP and Russian world for all these 30 years. There was no need to resist – it was necessary to serve with faith and truth, as they served and are still serving, and ‘there would be no war.’ It’s logical,” wrote Evstratiy (Zorya).
Danylevych, in turn, responded to the criticism in a comment under the said post. He insisted on his opinion that the actions of representatives of the OCU allegedly became for the president of Russia a pretext for the invasion of Ukraine.
“What benefit for the country did these captures of UOC churches and, especially, these laws on renaming the UOC to ‘ROcinU’ bring? None. Millions of Ukrainians, citizens of Ukraine – our believers – were to be renamed ‘Russians in Ukraine’, therefore being branded as enemies. And what did you achieve with those laws? That Putin used it to justify his invasion. Who gave him this argument? The one who was the ideologist of these laws, who pushed them through. And this is definitely not the UOC. We did not take the temples from ourselves and we did not pass laws against ourselves. Putin would probably have started the war anyway, but he might not have had this argument,” he wrote.
Danylevych stated that there is “no official statement” of the UOC in support of the Russian invasion and that the UOC-MP does not support the “Russian world.”
It should be recalled that a few days before the invasion, Mykola Danylevych said that the war between Russia and Ukraine was only “on TV.”
