U.S. Ambassador to Greece and former Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt expressed concern about Moscow’s actions in countries with the Orthodox majority of the population where it is trying to sow instability, including by seeking to cancel the historic granting of the tomos of autocephaly to the OCU.<\/p>\n
\u201c[T]he United States remains concerned that Moscow continues to try to foment instability and undermine the sovereignty of independent Orthodox-majority nations, including its efforts to reverse the Ecumenical Patriarch\u2019s historic grant of Tomos to the Church of Ukraine.\u00a0 Our own U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom has listed Russia as a \u201ccountry of particular concern\u201d for engaging in systematic, ongoing, and egregious violations of religious freedom,” Pyatt told the 3rd International Conference on Religious Diplomacy.<\/a><\/p>\n The U.S. Ambassador to Greece also quoted U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken as saying that \u201cin 2014, the Ukrainian people chose a democratic and European future for themselves.\u00a0 Russia responded by manufacturing a crisis and invading.\u00a0 Ever since, Russia has occupied Ukraine\u2019s territory in Crimea and has orchestrated a war in the eastern part of Ukraine \u2013 with proxies that it leads, trains, supplies, and finances \u2013 that has killed nearly 14,000 people and redrawn Ukraine\u2019s borders by force.\u00a0 Beyond its military aggression, Moscow has also worked to undermine Ukraine\u2019s democratic institutions.\u00a0 It has interfered in Ukraine\u2019s politics and elections; it has blocked energy and commerce to intimidate its leaders and pressure its citizens; it has used propaganda and disinformation to sow distrust; and it has launched cyber-attacks on the country\u2019s critical infrastructure.\u201d<\/p>\n Geoffrey Pyatt recalled how last week the Orthodox Church of Ukraine celebrated the three-year anniversary of receiving the Tomos of Autocephaly from Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew. The U.S. Ambassador to Greece also spoke of the Ukraine visit of U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen he was in Kyiv last summer, Secretary Blinken met with Metropolitan Epiphanius and discussed the Tomos while touring St. Michael\u2019s.\u00a0 The Secretary affirmed Ukraine\u2019s right to religious freedom as a fundamental human right, while Epiphanius raised his concerns about the violations of religious freedom in the occupied territories of Donetsk, Luhansk, and Russian controlled Crimea. Again last week in Washington, Secretary Blinken addressed publicly and forcefully the issue of Russian violations of Ukrainian sovereignty and territorial integrity,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Pyatt noted that due to the importance of the events in Ukraine and Russia’s aggression, these issues also \u201cfigured prominently\u201d a prominent place in the Ecumenical Patriarch’s conversations with Blinken in Washington.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" U.S. Ambassador to Greece and former Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt expressed concern about Moscow’s actions in countries with the Orthodox majority of the population where it is trying to sow instability, including by seeking to cancel the historic granting of the tomos of autocephaly to the OCU. \u201c[T]he United States remains concerned that Moscow […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":78829,"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":[5150,5149],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-78854","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-interviews","8":"category-opinions"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/df.news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/1741559.jpg?fit=610%2C385&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/df.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78854","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\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/df.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78854"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/df.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78854\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/df.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/78829"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/df.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78854"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/df.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78854"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/df.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78854"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}