“Putin thinks he is a modern-day emperor. Power is intoxicating. And the great authoritarian power blinds the eyes with power and you forget that you are human. It is not possible to cross yourself, pray to God, and at the same time kill children and people in general. These things are incompatible,” Patriarch Theodore II of Alexandria and All Africa said, according to panorthodoxsynod.
“And so the Grace of God abandons you and you believe that you are a superhuman, without feeling that your feet are ‘earthy,’” he pointed out.
“Putin is a Christian , we met in person. I know he has good attitude toward me. Before the ecclesiastical issues arose when the Russian Church invaded our church, our poor, Missionary Church, we had met many times. As I speak Russian , we could exchange views. Once, in Cairo, where he came years ago, we met and talked for an hour and a half. I know that he has this piety towards the Church, towards Orthodoxy. But all this has disappeared and in the future there is only one interest and brazenness in these people that will not work out in the end. You can not say that you love God and still kill people,” said Theodoros II.
As he said, he himself was anticipating Putin’s invasion of Ukraine because “the power of the possible” always prevails.
He noted that the Patriarchate of Alexandria immediately condemned the Russian invasion of Ukraine. “We had another bad experience of the ecclesiastical invasion by the Russian Church of the Patriarchate of Alexandria and, in fact, the poor African parishes. They came to these poor people to sow their familiar ‘weeds’ and make a cowardly ecclesiastical invasion, in a place where for 2,000 years now we have been struggling with so much humiliation and poverty, to help hundreds of thousands of people in the African vasts,” he explained.
He recalled that he had once lived for 10 whole years in Ukraine, in Odesa, from 1985 to 1995.
“I learned their language, I studied there, I represented the Patriarchate, and I know them so well and I love them so much. That’s why my pain is twofold. How many times had I traveled from Odesa to Kharkiv and Kyiv. And because I know very well how nice the people there are, what nice feelings they have inside, I condemned from the first moment the war between two homodox peoples. Both the Russian people and the Ukrainian people are Orthodox. It is sad when the interests of the big, the oligarchs, have brought so many thousands of people into this situation. And especially the frightened eyes of young children. And the neighborhoods that I walked, people I met, whom I loved, and maybe many of them are not alive anymore,” the Patriarch said.
Asked about the resistance put up by the Ukrainians, the Patriarch of Alexandria said that they are a very brave people.
“The history of the Ukrainian people during World War 2 is terrible. They are a very heroic people, with a big embrace of love. They never bother anyone. They are trying to survive. I then experienced the great change from the Soviet Union, the hunger we were going through for two to three years. And yet they are a proud, dignified people, they will never show you their poverty. “They are patriots and will defend their homeland even if the last Ukrainian has to sacrifice all his blood,” he said.
He made special reference to the refugee drama, recalling that there are many refugees from Africa who are trying to cross into Europe, from Libya, and whom he tries to emphasize in his sermons, that “where they go to cross the sea, the Libyans, in the Mediterranean, they will not find paradise,” in an attempt to persuade them to stay where they are.
Asked how the Patriarchate can help the Ukrainians, Theodore II said that he communicates with many people and does what he can. According to him, an attempt is being made to send to Ukraine containers with food and medicine, with many of the items that had previously been sent as humanitarian aid to Africa.
