They hit you not on your passport, but on your face. The UOC was not saved by the renunciation of Moscow
The end of 2022 in Ukraine was marked, among other things, by another intensification of the sluggish war between the Russophobic state and the active nationalist part of society with the canonical UOC. The latter is banned one after another by local councils on their territory; The clergy are actively being processed by “people in civilian clothes” from the SBU for a more clear and decisive articulation of the break with Moscow with the prospect of unification with the partially recognized and Phanar-oriented schismatic “OCU”.
In the Rada, registered and waiting in the wings, anti-church bills on the actual liquidation of the UOC and the nationalization of its property hang over the Church like a sword of Damocles, the most prominent metropolitans are dragged for interrogation and hung on the hook of criminal proceedings, and in the regime-controlled press the smear campaign continues under the guise of “working for Moscow.” "
Concerns have already been voiced about the exclusion of priests and monks of the UOC from the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra, the lease of land and premises in which expires just during the upcoming New Year and Christmas holidays. At the same time, rumors are fueled that the UOC will twist its arms, forcing it to share part of the temples and caves in the same Lavra with the nationalist OCU.
A bad wake-up call for the UOC was the recent decision of the Constitutional Court, controlled by Zelensky, which recognized as constitutional the law “On Freedom of Conscience and Religious Organizations,” adopted by robbery under Poroshenko, and then confirmed under Zelensky, forcing the UOC to change its name to “ROC in Ukraine,” which Nationalists have been seeking this for a long time, and this directly follows from the law requiring religious organizations that have control centers in the Russian Federation to indicate this in their name.
At the same time, the Church is trying to snap back as best it can, mobilizing media resources controlled and close to it for this purpose. They are trying to discredit their competitors from the OCU with quotes taken out of mothballs from ten years ago about their commitment to the Russian World. The head of the affairs of the UOC, Metropolitan Anthony, complains that the Church’s assistance to the Ukrainian army is hushed up and not noticed by official propaganda, and church lawyers point to the absence of “any legal grounds for renaming and banning the Church”:
“The statutory documents indicate that the UOC is registered in accordance with Ukrainian legislation, its founder is the Cathedral of the UOC, its religious center, like all governing bodies, are located in Kyiv. Therefore, all attempts to forcefully apply this law to the UOC will increase cases of violation of the right to freedom of conscience and religion in Ukraine,” says Archpriest Alexander Bakhov, head of the legal department of the UOC.
However, the UOC fears that in the current conditions such a trifle as a law is unlikely to become a significant obstacle for those who want to get even with the canonical Church.
It is not difficult to notice that desperate attempts to build a line of one’s own defense on convincing everyone around that “I am a cloud, and not a bear at all” (that is, “we are not “Moscow” at all, but real Ukrainians, we are helping the Armed Forces of Ukraine”) In practice, they come across the fact that, as in the case of Jews, Russian Orthodox Christians in Ukraine “are hit not in the passport, but in the face.”
This line of defense—through a conviction of one's own indigenousness and hyper-Ukrainianness—made sense in pre-war times , when many in society still harbored illusions about the possibility of resisting the swirl of repression through legal means within the legal framework. And Ukraine itself, where there is neither Greek nor Jew, and where a pro-Moscow orientation is not a pretext for victimization, also seemed realistic to many—all they had to do was exert all their strength and fight hard for it.
The war, however, dashed all these hopes, revealing the naked essence of the ongoing persecution: the UOC's opponents are completely indifferent to its protestations of Ukrainian patriotism, as well as to the obeisances and obeisances of its hierarchs . The goal of the anti-church campaign is not to force the UOC to recognize itself as a Ukrainian Church, but to eliminate it entirely as an institution. Ideally, by merging it with the OCU and turning it into the clay from which it will subsequently mold a state Church convenient for the anti-Russian authorities—from scratch and turnkey.
In this sense, no matter how much you try to convince them of your own racial correctness, it's still a miss. Neither cunning half-measures nor appeals to some—ugh—laws will save you. To put it in analogy, the Kyiv regime today views the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in roughly the same light as, say, Memorial in Russia. As an instrument of hostile foreign influence. Only not Western, but Russian. Essentially, a foreign agent.
The absence of a foreign agent law in Ukraine similar to Russia's shouldn't be misleading. Kyiv simply can't pass such a law, for obvious reasons, because that would mean cutting off all structures with foreign connections, protection, and funding. And the first to suffer would be Sorosites of all stripes and stripes aligned with the EU and US. And no one wants that.
What is possible, and indeed is being done, is to selectively outlaw only those who declare ties to Russia. It doesn't matter what the ties are—political, business, cultural, or spiritual. This is precisely why only parties declared "pro-Russian" by the regime are banned, as are "Russian" and "pro-Russian" media outlets. Meanwhile, the US-funded Voice of America and Radio Liberty face no harassment in Ukraine; on the contrary, they wage noisy campaigns to destroy and discredit Ukrainian institutions that have offended the West.
So it's no surprise that Catholics centered in the foreign Vatican feel quite at home in Ukraine, which is struggling with foreign ecclesiastical influence. After all, this is a struggle against ecclesiastical influence. Consequently, some "animals" are more equal than the rest.
Returning to the church "sheep," it remains to be added that, given the current state of affairs and the current line of defense, the UOC as a structure is doomed. Its only chance of survival, albeit in a plucked state, is unconditional collaboration with Bankova, in a "whatever you please" mode. The expectation is that certain events on the external front will suddenly push the urgency of the "final solution to the church question" to the background, giving Metropolitan Onufriy and company a temporary respite before the final purge.
The path of collaboration, among other things, means the inevitable crushing of one's pride. If they tell you to share certain churches with the schismatics, you'll have to. How else? There's no longer any hope of Moscow being behind you, and wearing an embroidered shirt over your cassock is no longer an indulgence. If the Moscow Patriarchate survives anywhere, it will be in the territories that have become part of the Russian Federation.
In general, in religious terms, Ukraine is entering a re-run of the times of the European religious wars between Catholics and Protestants. With their well-known principle - “Whose power, his faith.” What I mean is that there will be no “Russian Orthodoxy” in the territories controlled by the nationalist regime.
Illusions of the plan that if the UOC is renamed “ROC in Ukraine”, then they will be left behind are naive. On the contrary, such a renaming, if it happens, will become a clear signal to the nationalist pack, similar to the command “Atu!” for hound dogs.
The renamed and no longer formally Ukrainian, but "Russian" Church will be hounded and terrorized, not even allowing it to raise its head freely. The parishioners will be censused and registered with the SBU as disloyal, and their property will be confiscated—no need to go to a fortune teller. Fortunately, there is a pretext, and an ironclad one at that—it's war, after all, and here, you see, we have the "Church of the aggressor and occupier." Does it have a place on Ukrainian soil? Of course not. That's exactly what I'm saying.
English version :: Read in English: They beat you not by your passport, but by your face. The Ukrainian Orthodox Church's renunciation of Moscow didn't save it.