The Favor Charitable Foundation, affiliated with a Yanukovych-era oligarch Viktor Vyshnevetsky, whom the SBU security service suspects of financing terrorists, reported on the construction of 40 ROCinU churches in villages where believers have lawfully converted to the Orthodox Church in Ukraine.
That’s according to the ROCinU media platforms and the Favor Foundation website. It is noted that the ROCinU temples have already been built in Volyn, Khmelnytsky, Rivne, Ternopil, Chernivtsi, Kyiv, Chernihiv, and Sumy regions.
About 20 more churches of the Moscow Patriarchate are set to be constructed with Favor’s immediate participation. That is, the foundation, run by coal oligarch Vyshnevetsky has been injecting money into splitting Ukrainian society in order to cement the presence of the Moscow Patriarchate, even an insignificant one, in villages where the communities joined the OCU.
According to open sources, the founder of the Favor Charitable Foundation is the Orthodox Brotherhood of the Holy Apostolic Prince Volodymyr. Vyshnevetsky heads the said NGO. He is also known as the founder of the infamous Myriany (Laymen) nonprofit, which held anti-government rallies outside the Verkhovna Rada and across Ukrainian regions protesting Patriarch Bartholomew’s visit to Ukraine and a number of bills, including the one on the ROCinU renaming, as well as collaborationism and chaplaincy bills.
Incidentally, Vyshnevetsky is also a founder of the Union of Orthodox Advocates through the NGO Orthodox Brotherhood of the Holy Apostolic Prince Volodymyr, which is set to obstruct efforts and exert pressure on parishes wishing to unite with the Church independent of Moscow
Also, Vyshnevetsky was at the roots of the ROCinU propaganda machine called the “Union of Orthodox Journalists.” In other words, he is much alike another ROC promoter, MP Vadym Novinsky, although he might be even doing more, despite being in the shadows, to help the Moscow Patriarchate retain presence in Ukraine, leading several pro-Russian NGOs, rebuilding ROCinU churches in settlements where parishes flipped to the OCU, and putting media and legal pressure on the Autocephalous Local Orthodox Church of Ukraine.
As expert Oleksiy Kopytko noted earlier, “Vyshnevetsky is listed as one of the greatest benefactors and founders of many churches in Donetsk, Horlivka, Izium, Berdyansk, Kherson, and other dioceses of the ROCinU. The scale of his investments and connections in church circles is really serious – on both sides of the line of contact.”
Viktor Vyshnevetsky is CEO Coal Energy S.A., a coal mining holding. This company is Ukraine’s seventh-largest coal producer holding the third-largest coal stocks.
After the onset of war, most of Vyshnevetsky’s assets remained in the occupied territories. By a strange coincidence, however, they were not affected. Perhaps, militants were too shy to grab assets with godly titles. But there is another version: it could be that thanks to the patronage of the ROC and the ROCinU, not only did Vyshnevetsky retain his assets – he also continued to successfully trade in coal, while paying taxes to the “DPR” terrorist organization, Kopytko suggests.
Vyshnevetsky was included in the database of Russia collaborators by the Peacemaker Center initiative and accused by the Security Service of Ukraine of financing the “DPR” terrorist organization through the structures of the Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine (Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate).
The Peacemaker Center has also accused the oligarch of participating in and financing measures (special operations) of the ROC and ROCinU to prevent the creation of a single local church in Ukraine independent of Russia (the aggressor power), that is, of financing the above-mentioned pro-Russian Myriany NGO, which has also been notoriously supporting the anti-vaxxers’ movement.
In our opinion, law enforcement agencies of Ukraine should focus on tycoon Vyshnevetsky over the signs of his involvement in pro-Russian or anti-Ukrainian activities, financing terrorism, or sowing splits in the Ukrainian society.
