{"id":211377,"date":"2024-12-24T09:54:56","date_gmt":"2024-12-24T07:54:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/df.news\/?p=211377"},"modified":"2024-12-25T09:55:39","modified_gmt":"2024-12-25T07:55:39","slug":"putin-wants-to-turn-uoc-into-russian-religious-minority-expert","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/df.news\/en\/2024\/12\/24\/putin-wants-to-turn-uoc-into-russian-religious-minority-expert\/","title":{"rendered":"Putin wants to turn UOC into \u201cRussian religious minority\u201d – expert"},"content":{"rendered":"

Including the \u201cchurch issue\u201d in a potential \u201cGreat Deal\u201d between Russia and Ukraine could lead to the UOC being recognized as a \u201cRussian religious minority.\u201d This would nullify all previous statements by the Church about its independence from Moscow and affirm it a destabilization tool in the hands of the Kremlin.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s according to an article by Tetiana Derkach, published by the Religion in Ukraine<\/a> outlet.<\/p>\n

As the inauguration of U.S. President Donald Trump nears, the more expectations emerge that this unpredictable leader will come and bring order to the whole world. First and foremost, it is about suspending\/ending the Russo-Ukrainian war. At the moment, it looks like Putin is not ready to put up with losses and make compromises, and therefore, he will cram all his conscious and subconscious desires into his project of the \u201cGreat Deal.\u201d One of its sore points is the church, or rather, the idea of \u200b\u200bthe church as an agent of influence on enemy soil.<\/p>\n

Godless Jews against the “torn church”<\/p>\n

On December 19, Putin held his traditional “Direct Line” press event, where he answered the question of how he feels about the Russian Orthodox Church having been “practically expelled” from Ukraine, and whether he believes that “the positions of the Russian Orthodox Church have been undermined”.<\/p>\n

“What is happening to the Russian Orthodox Church is the grossest, most blatant violation of human rights and the rights of believers. The Church is being torn apart in front of the whole world. It’s like an execution. And everyone in the world prefers to turn a blind eye to it. Those who are doing this will suffer consequences,” answered the man who unleashed the largest war in Europe since World War 2, whose hands are drenched in blood, and in whose country large-scale religious repressions are taking place.<\/p>\n

Many observers have noticed that Putin has recently begun to slide into a cave-era anti-Semitism. In the case of the \u201cpersecution of the UOC,\u201d he also found a \u201cJewish trace\u201d: \u201cYou see, the thing is, that after all, they are not even atheists, these people. Atheists are those who also believe in something. They believe that there is no God. This is their faith, their convictions. But these are not atheists, these are people without any faith. They are ethnic Jews, but who has seen them in a synagogue? No one has seen them in a synagogue. They are not Orthodox, they do not go to churches either. They are definitely not supporters of Islam, because they hardly appear in a mosque either.\u201d<\/p>\n

But no one has understood what Russia plans to do with these people: \u201cThese are people without a family, without a tribe. What is dear to them is not dear to us and the majority of the Ukrainian people. They will flee someday and go not to church, but to the beach. This is their choice. I think that someday they will remember this. And the people of Ukraine, the vast majority of the people of Ukraine are related to Orthodoxy, will assess their actions.<\/p>\n

But let’s not cherish the illusion that Russia will give up on the church crisis in Ukraine \u2013 that’s not in what it has been investing for 30 years.<\/p>\n

The \u201cGreat Deal\u201d, the salvation of the \u201cRussian religious minority\u201d?<\/p>\n

According to the sources of \u201cReligion in Ukraine\u201d, this speech caused discontent within the UOC. By and large, the very idea of \u200b\u200b\u200b\u200bbeing included as a bargaining chip in the \u201cGreat Deal\u201d sparks no enthusiasm, to put it mildly, among many believers of this church (at all hierarchical levels). In private conversations, some say that then they will have to leave the waiting room and unleash overt pressure on the church leadership with the demand to sever canonical ties with the ROC. Nobody wants to look like prisoners of war who were publicly listed for exchange and left as a symbol of the enemy\u2019s presence.<\/p>\n

However, Putin\u2019s threat to the \u201cgodless Jews\u201d that they will \u201csuffer consequences\u201d still looks rather vague, but we will assume that he insists on resuscitating the so-called \u201cIstanbul agreements\u201d taking into account \u201crealities on the ground\u201d. At the moment, no one knows whether the \u201cUOC case\u201d will be included in the \u201cGreat Deal\u201d, and if so, in what wording. There are many speculations on this subject, one of which is as follows: \u201cUkraine must ensure the protection of all constitutional rights (including property rights) of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate as a Russian religious minority\u201d.<\/p>\n

This conclusion is based on several versions of draft agreements on the settlement in Ukraine that were allegedly on the table of the Russo-Ukrainian negotiating group in early 2022. For example, in the draft deal of March 7, 2022, the UOC is directly identified as a component of the MP (after all, it is impossible to protect the rights of an organization whose formal public status cannot be clearly identified):<\/p>\n

\u201c1. All persons on the territory of Ukraine shall enjoy the rights and freedoms enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other relevant international documents relating to human rights.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. To this end<\/li>\n
  2. a) Ukraine undertakes:<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    \u2013 to guarantee freedom of conscience and religion, to abolish and prevent restrictions and discrimination against the canonical Orthodox Church (the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate), to restore all its rights, including property rights;\u201d<\/p>\n

    But the Ukrainian side then reportedly tried to clean out from the agreement everything that did not relate to its direct subject. Then Russia approached the issue more creatively and already in the draft of the \u201cIstanbul Agreement\u201d of March 27, 2022, it directly tied the rights of the largest jurisdiction in Ukraine to the protection of the rights of Russian religious minorities.<\/p>\n

    \u201cArticle 9<\/p>\n

    (Position and rights of persons belonging to national or ethnic, religious and linguistic minorities)<\/p>\n

    Ukraine shall guarantee to persons belonging to national or ethnic, religious and linguistic minorities, individually or together with other persons, the right to freely express, preserve and develop their ethnic, cultural, linguistic, or religious identity and to maintain and develop their culture, without being exposed to any attempts at assimilation against their will. (Article 12 of the Treaty on Friendship, Cooperation and Partnership between the Russian Federation and Ukraine of 1999)<\/p>\n

      \n
    1. a) Ukraine shall abolish the restrictions and discrimination imposed on the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, introduced up to the moment of the signing of this document, shall not allow any restrictions or discrimination in the future, and shall restore all its rights, including property rights”.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      The fact that this does not concern all religious minorities, but rather those associated with Russia, is indicated by the reference to Article 12 of the Treaty on Friendship, Cooperation and Partnership between the Russian Federation and Ukraine of 1999 (terminated in 2018):<\/p>\n

      “The High Contracting Parties shall ensure the protection of the ethnic, cultural, linguistic and religious identity of national minorities on their territory and create conditions for the promotion of this identity”.<\/p>\n

      In practice, this means a banal reception of the already repealed \u201cLaw on Renaming\u201d No. 2662-VIII, with which the UOC fought so desperately for the past years, involving all the media resources of the ROC in this fight, especially the All-Union Central Committee of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (which oversaw the \u201cUOC\u201d project). Let us recall that after the adoption of the \u201cLaw on Renaming\u201d, Patriarch Kirill was indignant that the forced re-registration of the UOC would lead to \u201cbloody conflicts\u201d over churches, and the then head of the All-Union Central Committee, Metropolitan Hilarion (Alfeyev), was concerned that in this way \u201cthe authorities would force parishes, and possibly entire dioceses, to enter a schism\u201d. But then the idea of \u200b\u200bresistance to renaming was based not so much on discontent over the Moscow Patriarchate, but on the fact that re-registration was forced by the Ukrainian government: \u201cyou won\u2019t bring us to our knees\u201d. Now the renaming will become a condition for protecting rights, but the coercion will come from Russia. Even if the UOC is not forced to become the ROC in Ukraine \u201cby passport\u201d, any option for its inclusion in the \u201cGreat Deal\u201d will result in a \u201cblack mark\u201d \u2013 affiliation with the ROC (and in the worst case scenario \u2013 inclusion in the Russian religious minority). This would automatically entail the annulment of the decisions of the Feofania Council of 2022. It is difficult to even imagine how the leaders of the UOC will explain such a stunning shift to their flock, which, like in a nursery rhyme, has learned by heart its \u201csymbol of faith\u201d: \u201cwe are not MP, we are independent.\u201d The Ukrainian state \u201cdid not bring it to its knees,\u201d but the Russian one will do it easily \u2013 the main thing is what marketing concept to apply. In any case, such an indication of a centralized structure should be there to distinguish it from the OCU, the official name of which, let us recall, is the UOC (OCU). So, the UOC should also have its own brackets.<\/p>\n

      By the way, speaking about \u201ctaking into account the realities on the ground\u201d: \u201cprotection\u201d of the UOC in the \u201cGreat Deal\u201d would also require it to \u201cpay\u201d by officially abandoning all dioceses in the territories that, as a result of the negotiations, would remain under Russian occupation\u2026<\/p>\n

      Media paralysis<\/p>\n

      Confusion with the abbreviation also occurred amid the media coverage of Putin\u2019s threats to \u201cgodless Jews\u201d. The Russian media seems to have been disoriented: some of them wrote about the \u201cUkrainian Orthodox Church\u201d, some \u2013 about the \u201cOrthodox Church in Ukraine\u201d, some \u2013 about the ROC, but almost all of them took Putin\u2019s quotes out of context.<\/p>\n

      Cleric News: \u201cPersecution of the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) is not carried out by atheists, but by real godless people\u201d. \u201cReligion Today\u201d ignored this. \u201cChrysma Center\u201d: \u201cRussian President V. Putin commented on the persecution of the Orthodox Church in Ukraine during a Direct Line. Pravblog reposted \u201cChrisma\u201d without comments. Volodymyr Legoyda ignored this. Metropolitan Leonid (Gorbachev) used the abbreviation \u201cUOC\u201d: \u201cThe president, not shying away from expressions, called the persecution of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church \u2018torture and execution\u2019, which the world fails to notice. And the Ukrainian authorities, who are to blame for this, are \u2018people without family and tribe\u2019\u201d. Patriarchy.ru ignored this. Hierarchs close to the patriarchate also pretended that nothing had happened: Savva (Tutunov)\u2019s Telegram channel \u201cCogito ergo sum\u201d ignored this, and Tikhon (Shevkunov) did, too. Paradoxically, all Ukrainian media platforms that are directly or indirectly related to the UOC also ignored this news bit almost in full. Only the Telegram channel \u201cRaskolam.net\u201d fell out of the main line as its admins got confused and reposted without comment a Russian-language report from the Telegram channel \u201cChrisma\u201d affiliated with the ROC. But there is also silence on the website of the same platform. \u201cRaskolam.net\u201d is associated with the former cleric of the UOC, Oleksiy Zoshchuk, who fled Ukraine back in 2018 and instructed the teams of his sponsored media outlets, \u201cRaskolam.net\u201d and \u201cSPZh\u201d, to sign up for the \u201cLimassol Battalion\u201d. It is convenient to push your native church into a meat grinder from Cyprus, but this time the entire Cypriot team of believers for some reason did no PR job for Putin.<\/p>\n

      Beyond the cover<\/p>\n

      In the course of the struggle for its own survival, the UOC consistently sustained a myth about its own self-sufficient actorship, to the point that, according to its speakers, \u201cthere is no Moscow Patriarchate in Ukraine.\u201d And for a while this myth was forcibly supported in Moscow, \u201cunderstanding\u201d the Feofania Cathedral and the cleaning up of the charter as \u201can attempt to save the church from pressure\u201d. The Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church then adopted a resolution that the decisions of the UOC Cathedral \u201crequire study in the established manner\u201d for their compliance with the charter of Patriarch Alexy II and the statute of the Russian Orthodox Church, but up to this point it has not managed to issue its canonical verdict, only occasionally expressing concern about the prospects of the UOC falling into schism. In fact, everything is very simple: should the Russian Orthodox Church create a theological and canonical commission and stated that the UOC had fallen into schism after the Feofania Council, this would be the best confirmation of the UOC actorship. But the Russian Orthodox Church has extensive experience in adapting to war circumstances, in particular, precedents from the times after the declaration of the local vicar Sergiy about supporting the godless Soviet government in 1927. The Bolsheviks demanded that the ROC commemorate the authorities as early as Patriarch Tikhon in 1923, and even then, the Group of Non-Commemorators emerged (led by Metropolitan Feodor (Pozdeevsky)). The Bolsheviks then exerted even more pressure by banning \u201cthe commemoration in public prayers of convicts or those being tried for committing grave crimes against the state\u201d since \u201csuch commemoration\u2026 has features of an explicit political demonstration against the workers\u2019 and peasants\u2019 government.\u201d Patriarch Tikhon was imprisoned at that time, falling under precisely such definition. Moreover, the authorities demanded from Tikhon himself that he forbid his own commemoration. Neither then, nor later, after the publication of the Declaration of 1927, did the ROC consider the non-commemorators as having fallen out with the church, although it was a rather powerful movement, some representatives of which even questioned the validity of Sergiy\u2019s sacraments.<\/p>\n

      Although the non-commemorators movement in the UOC is not something Patriarch Kirill likes, this is not yet a reason to declare a schism. But, from Kirill’s point of view, his subordinates in Kyiv have been playing their independence game a bit too much. And therefore Moscow from time to time reminds that the UOC continues to be part of the ROC.<\/p>\n

      Cannonballs in the meat grinder of Putin\u2019s \u201chustle and bustle\u201d<\/p>\n

      “And who are the judges?” a Russian literature classic once said. Perhaps only the lazy ones (primarily in Russia) never asked the question, what the goals of the so-called \u201cSMO\u201d are. Are these goals worth the price that has already been paid not only by Ukraine, but also by Russia itself, as well as the rest of the world? Since this war is Putin\u2019s personal project, let\u2019s turn to the original source: \u201cYou know, when everything is calm, routine, and stable for us \u2013 we get bored, stagnant. We want to hustle and bustle. As soon as the hustle and bustle starts, things start whistling by our temples. Seconds, bullets\u2026 Unfortunately, the bullets are whistling, too. And then we ger so scared. Terrible, terrible. Well, it\u2019s indeed terrible. But not \u2018terrible, terrible, terrible\u2019\u201d. No matter how much someone tries to see something truly grandiose or spiritual there, something that requires God\u2019s sanction, in reality everything is quite simple. If we admit that \u201cdemilitarization\u201d and \u201cde-Nazification\u201d are just vignettes of a false essence, the bottom line is that for Putin, the meaning of his war with Ukraine lies in the very process of bloodshed and the inhuman pleasure he gets from it. This is banal revenge for \u201cbetrayal,\u201d and the occupied cities wiped out from the face of the Earth are evidence of this. In this sense, being under the protection of the occupation forces means only one thing: the protected one consciously admits their transition to the side of the invader and \u201cfor the purpose of protection\u201d starts wearing a distinctive badge.<\/p>\n

      Here it is necessary to clarify how Russia sees the role of the UOC in Ukraine, and what will happen if the UOC succumbs to uncontrolled cortisol pressure and (instead of genuine, not pharisaical trust in God and wise anti-crisis policy) agrees to protect a war criminal, a clinical psychopath, who is simply \u201cbored\u201d without bloodshed.<\/p>\n

      In Russia\u2019s imperialist plans to seize Ukraine, the main role assigned to the UOC is to remain a destabilizing factor. This is best explained by the famous theologian Archimandrite Kyrylo Hovorun: the goal of Russia\u2019s \u201cprotection\u201d of its assets outside its sphere of influence is to boost conflict and chaos. In other words, Putin and Patriarch Kirill see the UOC exclusively as cannon fodder. As a result of the \u201cGreat Deal,\u201d it may turn out that the Ukrainian state will conspicuously protect the integrity of only the church leadership, the key \u201cscapegoats provocateurs\u201d \u2013 Feodosii (Snigirov), Luka (Kovalenko), Pavel (Lebid), and the man behind the \u201ccanonical resistance\u201d \u2013 Metropolitan Antoniy (Pakanych). But no amount of government resources will be enough to prevent attacks on grassroots communities. The prospect looks very simple: from the very beginning, the UOC’s services will resemble “pride parades” surrounded by police, but sooner or later the communities will be asked to pay for their security themselves.<\/p>\n

      ***<\/p>\n

      The Acts of the Apostles describes a case where a possessed servant girl, whose masters profited off her “gift of clairvoyance”, saw the Apostle Paul and testified to what seemed to be the truth: “they are servants of the Most High God, who proclaim the way to salvation.” The irritated Paul had to cast out the evil spirit from the “prophetess,” because the possessed have no right to be witnesses of Christ and His truth. Today, the UOC is faced with a crucial choice more than ever \u2013 to begin the difficult work of fixing old mistakes or, having agreed to the illusion of protection from the death-obsessed leader of the aggressor state, to become a source of chaos in its own country. Unfortunately, there will be no way to skip the choice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      Including the \u201cchurch issue\u201d in a potential \u201cGreat Deal\u201d between Russia and Ukraine could lead to the UOC being recognized as a \u201cRussian religious minority.\u201d This would nullify all previous statements by the Church about its independence from Moscow and affirm it a destabilization tool in the hands of the Kremlin. That\u2019s according to an […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":211286,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"telegram_tosend":false,"telegram_tosend_message":"","telegram_tosend_target":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5151,5149,5153],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-211377","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-blogs-en","8":"category-opinions","9":"category-top-en"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/df.news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/1734978552_metka.jpg?fit=600%2C411&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/df.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211377","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/df.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/df.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/df.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/df.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=211377"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/df.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211377\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":211378,"href":"https:\/\/df.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211377\/revisions\/211378"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/df.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/211286"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/df.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=211377"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/df.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=211377"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/df.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=211377"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}