"Blessing" of patrons for further seizures of temples received?
Sergei (Epiphany) Dumenko met with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken. The OCU made it clear that the United States had given a go-ahead for a new wave of seizures.
The meeting of the US Secretary of State with the head of the OCU was literally on feet. According to Antony Blinken's schedule published on the State Department website, at 10:10 Kyiv time, the Secretary of State, accompanied by the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine Dmitry Kuleba and Sergei (Epiphany) Dumenko, laid flowers at the Donbass Conflict Memorial (as the State Department website calls the Wall of Memory of Ukrainian Heroes – Ed.), at 10:20 he made a tour of St. Michael's Golden-Domed Monastery, and at 10:45 he already met with the President of Ukraine V. Zelensky. That is, there were no negotiations as such. But despite this, the OCU website reported: "During a short but meaningful meeting, special attention was paid to the issue of the formation of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, the importance of removing artificial obstacles in the free, based on the principles of freedom of conscience, determination by communities of their affiliation." This message gives the OCU away: the main thing that they expected from the meeting with the Secretary of State was a "blessing" for further activities on the "issue of formation" of the OCU. And we know perfectly well what kind of activity it is.
Of course, the fact that Antony Blinken honoured only the head of the OCU with his attention speaks of how openly the United States supports this project in Ukraine. By the way, it also speaks of Blinken's disregard for the opinion and feelings of the "natives", because he could have invited other religious leaders, the same Uniates and Catholics, to lay flowers at the Donbass Conflict Memorial. But why bother?
How it all began
It is believed that the implementation of the project to create the OCU began with a visit to the Phanar of the then President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko in April 2018, after which he announced the policy decision of the Patriarchate of Constantinople to create a single local church from all existing confessions in Ukraine and grant it autocephaly. ... However, the roots of this project go much deeper.
The current US President Joe Biden has been a lobbyist for the interests of the Phanar and the Greek community in the United States since the distant 1974 when Turkish troops invaded Northern Cyprus. Joe Biden at that time was a senator from the state of Delaware. According to one of the most influential representatives of the Greek community in the United States, A. Manatos, Biden was at the centre of those events and did everything to support the Greeks in their confrontation with Turkey. Also, when J. Biden was a senator, he met Patriarch Bartholomew, and their close relationship continues to this day.
Even the joint photographs show how friendly the relationship between the head of the Phanar and the current President of the United States is.
As Vice President of the United States, J. Biden visited Phanar twice: in 2011 and 2014. Moreover, the agenda of the talks at the 2014 meeting included a discussion of the situation in Ukraine, where Euromaidan had already won and a new president, Petro Poroshenko, was elected. After the talks, J. Biden said that he was impressed by the personality of Patriarch Bartholomew and described him as "a person who does what he says". One of the influential Greek priests in the United States, Alex Karloutsos, attributes to J. Biden the following words, repeated by him several times: “I have traveled the world and met with major leaders, and I have met only two figures similar to Christ: one is Nelson Mandela, and the other is Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew." J. Biden's ties with the Greek diaspora in the United States are so close that he received the nickname "Bidenopoulos", which, according to A. Manatos, he is very proud of.
After the "Revolution of Dignity" in 2014, J. Biden began to oversee relations with Ukraine in the American administration. He was in Ukraine 5 times: in March, June and November 2014, December 2015, January 2017. Appointments to all significant posts in the Ukrainian government and the main issues of domestic and foreign policy were agreed with Biden. These two circumstances: J. Biden's close ties with the Phanar and his influence in Ukraine suggest that the project of creating some kind of autocephalous church in Ukraine was conceived during his vice presidency, although it was implemented during the administration of the next American President Donald Trump.
Bipartisan consensus
On the issue of support for the OCU in particular, as well as for the Patriarchate of Constantinople as a whole, a so-called bipartisan consensus has developed in the United States. Both the Republican and Democratic parties of the United States equally supported the creation in Ukraine of a religious structure, not just independent of the Russian Orthodox Church, but hostile to it. The OCU project became possible due to the coincidence of interests of its three participants: the US administration, the Ukrainian government represented by P. Poroshenko, and the Patriarchate of Constantinople. The US administration saw in this project a tool for fighting Russia, P. Poroshenko and his administration tried to use autocephaly in the presidential election campaign in 2019, and the Phanar got the opportunity to put into practice the concept of the supremacy of the Patriarch of Constantinople in Orthodoxy "The first without equalsj". If the OCU project were successful, a precedent would be created in which all Local Orthodox Churches would recognize the decision of the Patriarchate of Constantinople, no matter how anti-canonical it may be, and Patriarch Bartholomew as a real leader with exclusive powers in the Orthodox world.
After the creation of the OCU in December 2018 and the receipt of the Tomos in January 2019, two parallel processes began: within Ukraine, local authorities and members of nationalist groups began to forcibly transfer the UOC communities to the OCU, and at the international level, the Phanar representatives and employees of the US State Department began to conduct negotiating with Local Orthodox Churches in order to make them recognize the OCU as a legitimate church. To date, the OCU has been recognized by the Alexandrian, Greek and Cypriot Churches, but within them, many bishops themselves refused to support this recognition. According to one of the most authoritative hierarchs of the Serbian Orthodox Church, Bishop Irinej of Bačka, the recognition of the OCU was the result of "bulldozer diplomacy" by representatives of the US State Department. And on January 3, 2021, the former US Secretary of State, a representative of the Republican administration, Mike Pompeo, openly admitted this on his Twitter account: “I made sure that the United States supported the international recognition of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, and helped the Metropolitan (Epiphany Dumenko – Ed.), helped it avoid Russian influence."
During the 2020 US presidential campaign, the head of the American Archdiocese of the Patriarchate of Constantinople, Archbishop Elpidifor (Lambriniadis), like many other figures of the US Greek diaspora, openly called for voting for J. Biden and directly participated in events in support of the Democratic candidate ... Patriarch Bartholomew was one of the first to congratulate J. Biden on his victory in the elections even before the official announcement of the results. “Not only millions of Americans, but all citizens of the free world applaud your victory, you give them hope and confidence in a better world where the eternal values and ideals of civilized humanity will triumph,” Patriarch Bartholomew wrote to a man who openly promotes homosexuality, supports abortion and calls those who adhere to traditional values "troglodytes". "Take care. We need your guidance,” Biden replied to the head of Phanar.
On November 17, 2020, immediately after the presidential elections with the United States, then US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made a very unusual visit to Turkey: he did not meet with any representative of the Turkish authorities and defiantly called Patriarch Bartholomew "Ecumenical patriarch", which contradicts the official Turkish position, which considers the head of the Phanar to be only the leader of the local Orthodox community. There was one more important circumstance in this visit: M. Pompeo's entourage was two of J. Biden's most trusted persons: Greg Schultz and Ron Klein. Turkish journalist Ergun Dealer wrote about this: “Pompeo's visit is not a farewell, but a new beginning with Biden's people. This is the situation!" It really looked like the transfer of affairs of the State Department wand the Phanar to the new administration, although at that time J. Biden's victory was still being challenged in American courts.
New narratives of S. Dumenko in the media
Recently, the head of the OCU S. Dumenko has suspiciously insistently kept speaking about a new wave of "transitions" of communities to the jurisdiction of the OCU, promising that in connection with the planned arrival of Patriarch Bartholomew to Ukraine, a new wave of "transitions" will be even larger than under Poroshenko.
For example, in an interview with Radio Liberty dated 24.04.2021, he said: “Those who were ready made a decision (to move to the OCU – Ed.). but there will be another wave. And not less, but more. Therefore, they (UOC – Ed.) have a certain fear of the arrival of the Ecumenical Patriarch to Ukraine."
It should be clarified that the term “transition” of the community to the jurisdiction of the OCU, which is constantly used by the supporters of the OCU, actually means the following in most cases:
- the violent seizure of the temple by national radicals, which is often accompanied by the beating of parishioners, insulting priests, cutting off locks, and so on;
- illegal re-registration of the community to the OCU, using the decision of the territorial community (village meeting), and not the religious one, as required by law.
Often these two methods are combined. Peaceful and legal transitions of the UOC communities to the OCU also take place. But out of 700 (according to S. Dumenko) communities that “moved” to the OCU, only about 80 of them did so out of their own free will. In all other cases, the “transitions” were violent and illegal. And this fact is confirmed by a huge number of reports about new churches under construction (or already built) in villages where the UOC community was expelled from their temple.
Also S. Dumenko repeats two new theses: firstly, that all communities of the UOC "according to the canons" belong to the OCU, and secondly, that the UOC "occupied" the name. The persistence with which the head of the OCU speaks out these theses into society allows us to conclude that the supporters of the OCU are seriously preparing for a new wave of church seizures, as well as the reanimation of the issue of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church changing its name to the ROC in Ukraine. Accordingly, it is planned to immediately assign the name "UOC" to the current OCU, and together with the name, the lion's share of all church property.
S. Dumenko's passages that the church canons allegedly say that he is the Metropolitan of Kyiv rather than His Beatitude Metropolitan Onuphry, whom he still "tolerates" in Ukraine, suggest that in this way he is preparing the ground for a decisive raider attack at the UOC. And now all the OCU needs is the following: it is necessary that the powers that be in Ukraine adopt S. Dumenko's discourse and begin to look at the OCU as the legitimate and only Orthodox religious organization in Ukraine, and the UOC must temporarily endure, preferably with the designation of specific terms for this patience.
In this situation, there is nothing better for the OCU than to demonstrate to the Ukrainian authorities the full support for the American administration, which was done in the form of a symbolic meeting between A. Blinken and S. Dumenko and a subsequent statement that the United States backs the issue of “the formation of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, the importance of removing artificial obstacles in the free, based on the principles of freedom of conscience, determination by communities of their affiliation”. Let us repeat, in reality, there is no talk of any " free, based on the principles of freedom of conscience, determination by communities of their affiliation", this is an obvious lie. The vast majority of "transitions" are accompanied by violence and violation of the law. And representatives of local authorities cannot create obstacles to "transfers" since the authorities in Ukraine themselves, in word and deed, declare their support for the OCU.
What about Vladimir Zelensky?
Whether or not a new wave of seizures of UOC churches takes place will largely depend on the position of the Ukrainian authorities. But the question of how far those in power are ready to go in supporting the OCU and fulfilling the wishes of the State Department remains open. Here you should pay attention to the following points:
First, the President of Ukraine has already demonstrated that the previously declared neutrality in church matters has ended. The invitation of the head of the Phanar to the celebration of the 30th anniversary of Independence and the statements of the top leaders of the state about the full support for the OCU (including economic and administrative) have clearly proved this.
Secondly, in recent weeks, V. Zelensky's team has taken significant steps, which are regarded as nothing less than a serious challenge to American influence in Ukraine. Representatives of the pro-Western lobby, the so-called "sorosyata" (Soros followers), were dismissed from their posts: the head of the NJSC Naftogaz board Andrei Kobolev, a member of the Supervisory Board of the National Depository, former finance minister, ex-secretary of the National Security and Defense Council Alexander Danilyuk, deputy general director of the concern " Ukroboronprom" Mustafa Nayem. Bankova's protege, former vice-president of the National Atomic Energy Generating Company Energoatom, German Galushchenko, was appointed to the post of Minister of Energy, and Yuri Vitrenko, also a protege of the President's Office, became the head of Naftogaz.
These personnel decisions have already drawn criticism from the United States. According to media reports, this topic was raised during the current visit of the US Secretary of State to Ukraine.
Therefore, if the United States, in negotiations with the Ukrainian authorities, really expresses a wish that the authorities try to ensure the growth of the OCU with new communities, then our officials are unlikely to want to refuse them and create another line of tension in bilateral relations. But at the same time, according to political expert Dmitry Dzhangirov, "the chance that Blinken will give an appropriate command on the first visit is extremely small, although such a possibility is not ruled out in the future".
Be that as it may, the logic of events says that in the context of the global confrontation with the Russian Federation, it is unlikely that the United States will forget about such a “loud” anti-Russian instrument as the OCU. And, perhaps, the President of Ukraine will be offered the role of Pontius Pilate with washing his hands. He does not seem to want a new religious confrontation, but they may well hint to him: if you do not surrender the UOC, you are not Biden's friend.
An exclusive meeting of S. Dumenko with the US Secretary of State – another self-exposure of the OCU
It is quite obvious that the OCU leadership is in euphoria from the fact that in Ukraine the US Secretary of State had a meeting only with S. Dumenko, ignoring other religious leaders. But in fact, this proves that American officials do not regard either S. Dumenko himself or the organization he heads as a religious organization in its essence.
D. Dzhangirov commented on this circumstance in the following way: “This is a short-term, symbolic visit, which shows that the OCU is in many ways an American project. This proves once again that Dumenko is a politician or an official for the Americans."
The leadership of the OCU is concerned about the seizure of the name "Ukrainian Orthodox Church", and meanwhile, it should be concerned about the problem of the OCU's inconsistency with the very concept of "church".
Hieromartyr Hilarion (Troitsky) of the 20th century spoke of the Church in the following way: “The Church is a society of people who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who have been reborn by Him and the Holy Spirit, united in love and under the continuous influence of the Holy Spirit attain perfection". Does this somehow refer to the OCU?
And our Lord Jesus Christ spoke about those who believe in him: “No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.”
What are the fruits of the OCU? Hostility, violence, lawlessness towards their fellow citizens who do not share their political views? Multiple seizures of temples and the announcement of an even bigger wave? Seeking approval for this activity from overseas patrons?
Is this all about Christianity?
