What goes around comes around: Galicians called the Russian-speaking mother of a Uniate priest “an accomplice of the occupiers”
Oles Avgust Chumakov, a Uniate priest serving in Odessa, complained in his blog about residents of Galicia who mistook his 80-year-old mother for a "collaborator with the occupiers" and demanded that she speak Ukrainian.
The author describes an incident on a bus, where a young couple, who came to Odessa from Western Ukraine on vacation, took the old woman’s seat indicated on the ticket, and when she was indignant, they asked her to switch to “human language” - that is, to “language”.
Subscribe to PolitNavigator news on Telegram , Facebook , Odnoklassniki , or VKontakte
Oles August Chumakov with ATO fighters who returned from the front
“Mom humbly tried to come to an agreement with them, but she speaks Ukrainian imperfectly due to the specifics of her life circumstances. This never stopped her from being a Ukrainian patriot and being proud of her ability to speak English. That's what she said. I was worried, but I said it. In response I heard: “We don’t understand Surzhik - speak as people speak.” And it was added: “We do not communicate with the accomplices of the occupiers at all.”
Speaking to me on the phone, my mother actually cried. He says: “I told them that I love Ukraine and love the language, that my son is a Greek Catholic priest, - and they laughed, because, they say, f...s and Muscovites are not Greek Catholics,” the priest wrote.
According to him, the old woman was doubly offended because during Euromaidan, despite her son’s ban, she “ran to Ukrainian rallies” in Odessa.
He also recommended that his fellow priests in Western Ukraine carry out work among parishioners: “I would be glad if my fellow priests, especially those who shepherd their ... um ... let's say - flock - in Galicia told the believers, especially those who going to the sea on vacation, believe me, this is not an isolated incident.”
Let us recall that the UGCC was one of the main driving forces behind the coup d'etat in Ukraine in 2013-14 - its representatives spoke from the Euromaidan stage, blessing the rioters. Subsequently, Uniate chaplains began to actively care for participants in the so-called ATO - a punitive operation against the Russian uprising in the Donbass.