On the wondrous miracles in the OCU: how FSB agents turn into patriots
The OCU possesses a miraculous gift. A "Kremlin agent" from the UOC instantly becomes a "patriot" after switching sides. St. Seraphim of Sarov turns into a Ukrainian, and the Russian language and Russian passport become quite tolerable.
It has become common for us to hear that OCU representatives justify their lawless actions against the Church of Christ as "cleansing" Ukraine and the Ukrainian religious field of everything Russian and imperial. After all, according to OCU supporters, Moscow and Russian Orthodoxy did nothing but oppress Ukraine and its people and promoted Moscow autocracy on our territory. In other words, everything allegedly served these purposes. Both the saints canonized by the Church, the entire structure of worship including the language, and various church traditions, architecture, iconography, religious literature, and so on. In general, everything associated with Muscovy or related to it in any way is viewed harmful and must be rejected and forgotten. And if this happens, then Ukraine will be able to breathe freely and begin a new happy life without imperial tyranny and oppression.
However, when we look at the words and actions of the OCU, something doesn’t add up. We hear statements which don’t align at all with the declared goal of eradicating everything Moscow-related. We now see that very "Moscow element" within the OCU itself – only there, it somehow miraculously becomes Ukrainian, and therefore beneficial, patriotic, and correct. We’ll start with several examples followed by further reflection.
How Moscow saints become Ukrainian
In January 2023, the head of the OCU, Serhiy (Epifaniy) Dumenko, declared that Ukrainians should renounce their heavenly patrons if those saints are connected to the Russian Church, as this is a “spiritual occupation” that must be eliminated. When a journalist asked what she should do if she had been baptized in honor of Xenia of St. Petersburg, Dumenko replied that she should now pray to a different Xenia: “We can speak of replacing one saint with another. If we take Xenia, there are other Xenias in whose honor the commemoration date can be changed.”
In other words, Russian Xenia is unpatriotic, but any other Xenia is perfectly acceptable – comme il faut, so to speak. One only needs to “receive a blessing from a priest”. Not only Xenia of St. Petersburg and Sergius of Radonezh, but many other “wrong” saints have become unwelcome in the OCU. Alexander Nevsky, for example, has been completely removed from their list of saints. “To remove from the Liturgical Calendar of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine the commemoration of the Blessed Prince Alexander of Novgorod (Nevsky), in schema Alexis, on November 23,” reads the text of the Synod’s decision.
OCU “priest” Roman Hryshchuk, who, notably, has received awards from Serhiy Dumenko, went even further, referring to certain saints as “Russian nutcases”. “It’s very easy to identify churches occupied by Moscow," Hryshchuk assured. "They always have icons of the Russian trinity: Xenia of St. Petersburg, Matrona of Moscow, and Russian Emperor Nicholas II, to remind people whose imperial fist they are living under,” said the so-called cleric.
The former director of the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra Reserve, Maksym Ostapenko, dismissed amid scandal, spoke out against St. Seraphim of Sarov, claiming that, in his view, Seraphim is “the official patron of Russia’s nuclear weapons”.
But when the political winds shift even slightly, so do the statements of OCU representatives. As soon as the rector of a small Bykovinian church of St. Seraphim of Sarov defected to the OCU, Hryshchuk suddenly referred to this saint as “Ukrainian”. “With great joy and reverence, we prayed together today in this beautiful, wondrous church. We prayed to our Ukrainian saint, among others – Seraphim of Sarov, who served as a novice in the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra, who grew in faith and brought light where there was none,” said Hryshchuk on May 20, 2025, welcoming the poor rector’s decision to transfer to the OCU to avoid beatings and bloodshed.
What happened? How did the “patron of Russia’s nuclear weapons” suddenly become a Ukrainian saint? The answer is simple: because the rector transferred the church to the OCU.
How “Muscovite” Church Slavonic becomes Ukrainian
As is well known, Church Slavonic is like a bone in the throat of the Church’s opponents. It is called “Russian”, viewed as a sign of “spiritual occupation”, and is actively discredited in every possible way. For example, on April 9, 2023, Serhiy Dumenko stated: “We are not for evicting the monks from the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra. We want the ‘Russian world’ spirit not to rule here. We want the Lavra to be Ukrainian, with prayers always offered in the Ukrainian language for our Ukraine.”
And on June 1, 2023, regarding the Pochaiv Lavra, he said: “A prayer in Ukrainian will soon be heard at the Pochaiv Lavra <…> It is a matter of time. We are still at the stage of relevant legal documents, and then we will claim to be present in this all-Ukrainian shrine.” His followers echo him. For example, Ivan Bobytko, a “priest” from Pereiaslav, said: “Finally, the Ukrainian language should be heard in our ancient churches, as it should be in an independent Ukraine.”
The equally controversial Roman Hryshchuk, during a failed attempt to transfer the Church of the Nativity of the Most Holy Theotokos of the UOC in the Bukovynian village of Staryi Vovchynets, reproached the rector for never having read the Lord’s Prayer in Ukrainian in twenty years of service. “He only serves in the Muscovite version of the Slavonic language,” Hryshchuk complained indignantly.
But speaking in the previously mentioned Church of St. Seraphim of Sarov, whose rector had just recently joined the OCU, Hryshchuk said something entirely different: that Church Slavonic is “ours too, and we shouldn't give it up to the Moskals.”
Thus, the moment someone joins the OCU, “Muscovite” Church Slavonic used in worship miraculously becomes “our Ukrainian heritage”.
Moreover, in the OCU’s cathedral in liberated Kherson, OCU “bishop” Damian Zamoraev conducts a significant part of the service not even in Church Slavonic, but in Russian. Yet no one brands him a traitor, an FSB agent, or a spiritual occupier of the Kherson region. Why is that? Simply because he belongs to the OCU; and in this organization, even the Russian language becomes patriotic and Ukrainian.
How a Patriarch Kirill antimins becomes “Ukrainian” in the OCU
At one time, media outlets affiliated with the OCU frequently published photos of antimensia in UOC churches that had been consecrated with the blessing of Patriarch Kirill. Although this practice stopped after the start of the full-scale war, the antimensia remained, and pro-OCU resources enthusiastically shared such photos with an obvious goal: to discredit the UOC and highlight its ties to Moscow.
However, the UOJ discovered that one of the most popular OCU “priest” bloggers, Oleksii Filiuk, serves on exactly such an antimins, consecrated with the blessing of the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church. Neither the OCU nor media outlets close to it responded in any way to the scandal. And since silence implies consent, one can draw a clear conclusion: serving in the OCU on the “bloody patriarch’s” antimensia is considered entirely acceptable practice.
Miraculous transformation
On November 6, 2023, Serhiy Dumenko stated in an interview with Radio Liberty that "Russians in Ukraine disguise themselves to attract Ukrainian believers to their churches." According to him, the UOC has about 6 million believers. Isn’t that too many “Russians” for Ukraine Serhiy Dumenko counted?
Another quote from the interview: “Because the sign on the church indicates that it is “the Ukrainian Orthodox Church”, and that is why it is dangerous. Because sometimes the enemy disguises itself. And now we see in many different areas that the enemy is trying to disguise itself as Ukrainian, but instead is doing its job of supporting the occupier.” In other words, anyone who puts up a sign saying "UOC" on a church is a disguised enemy.
On May 23, 2025, Serhiy (Epifaniy) Dumenko, in a publication dedicated to the launch of his structure in the previously UOC-owned Assumption Cathedral of Kaniv, complained that representatives of the Russian Federation are taking liturgical items from the churches of the OCU. He claimed that Russia “even physically, as we can see, is removing altars, icons, and other sacred items from our Ukrainian temples, hoping in this way to at least hinder the development of the true Local Church.”
Listening to Dumenko, one might think that Russian subversive groups are being deployed into regions of Western or Central Ukraine to physically carry out liturgical items from churches.
As is known, in some cases, UOC believers – when facing the threat of a church seizure – do indeed remove certain icons, vestments, and other liturgical objects that they personally purchased and donated to the church. In this way, they try to save at least something from church raiders. Moreover, all these items legally belong to them. But Serhiy Dumenko calls them Russians, enemies, and so on for doing so.
Yet, when OCU activists somewhere succeed through intimidation or persuasion in convincing a priest and his flock to voluntarily join the OCU, those very people (previously labeled enemies, Russians, and collaborators) instantly become Ukrainian patriots. They are praised, glorified, awarded, and more. How is this possible? If a person truly was an enemy of Ukraine and an ideological supporter of the “Russian world”, can mere formal affiliation with the OCU suddenly transform him? Will he not continue his subversive activities from within the “national” OCU?
By the way, Serhiy Dumenko has spoken about this as well. In one interview in May 2023, he stated that the OCU would not accept collaborators into its ranks: “There’s no point in discussing potential unification with those who openly oppose it, because they hold completely different values and priorities. <…> The OCU does not need collaborators in its ranks who hate everything Ukrainian.”
But has anyone ever heard of a UOC priest being refused entry into the OCU? Has anyone checked the “values and priorities” of those joining the OCU? No! As soon as someone expresses a desire to join the OCU, they are instantly transformed from a collaborator into a respectable Ukrainian patriot.
What about Russian passports?
Moreover, you can even hold a genuine Russian passport and be a citizen of an aggressor state. The OCU has at least two "hierarchs" with Russian citizenship: Klyment Kushch and Adrian Starina.
Klyment Kushch not only admits having a Russian passport but justifies it by saying he feared losing his property. This citizen of the aggressor state is not only free from prosecution by Ukrainian law enforcement but also serves as a lieutenant in the chaplain service and in December 2024 (i.e., during the war), was awarded the Order of Danylo Halytsky.
During the early 1990s, Adrian Starina had disputes with the Russian Orthodox Church leadership, after which he changed several church jurisdictions, was involved in numerous scandals, and was even a deputy of the Moscow Regional Council in 1992. Eventually, he joined Filaret Denysenko in the UOC-KP, where he also caused scandals and conflicts. In 1996, at the Theophany Cathedral in Noginsk, near Moscow, he conducted a “coronation to the imperial Throne of the Russian Empire of the autocrat of Great, Little, and White Rus – Emperor Nicholas III.”
At one point, he even wanted to join the UAOC, but they refused him. What kind of reputation must one have for the UAOC, which Filaret Denisenko called “a sewer into which all filth flows”, to reject him from their ranks? Is there any information that Adrian Starina is not a citizen of the Russian Federation? That he was stripped of his Russian citizenship? If not, then why isn’t he called a “collaborator in a cassock” or an “FSB agent”? This is not to mention his moral and ethical character, about which there is plenty of information online. Or does joining the OCU cleanse one of all sins?
Let’s move on. While UOC clerics are unreasonable insulted as “FSB agents,” the OCU “archbishop” Tikhon Petraniuk is accused of collaborating with the “LPR” intelligence services, with documents presented as evidence.
This was reported on the website of the "Fund for the Memory of His Beatitude Metropolitan Mefodiy", which belongs to the followers of the former head of the UAOC, Mefodiy Kudriakov. The resource “Without fear but with disgust for the traitor” published a scanned copy of Petraniuk’s signed statement, in which he voluntarily agrees to cooperate with representatives of the LPR special services.
“I, Petraniuk Taras Ivanovich, agree to voluntarily provide assistance to the organs of the LPR Ministry of Internal Affairs in their mission to protect the security of our Motherland. I undertake never to disclose to anyone the facts and methods of work of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, as well as bodies that are of interest to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, which became known to me in the process of cooperation. The written information I’m going to provide will be signed by FERZ ("Queen" – Trans. note),” the published document says.
However, we see neither a criminal case nor any statements from the OCU leadership calling Petraniuk a collaborator or Kremlin agent. Apparently, as in all other cases, affiliation with Dumenko’s organization magically turns everything “Moscow” into “Ukrainian”.
Conclusion
It turns out that despite all the patriotic slogans, the OCU is ready to turn a blind eye to literally everything: Russian saints, Church Slavonic and even the Russian language, Russian citizenship, and much more. As long as a person joins the OCU. This organization is some kind of magical space that miraculously and instantly transforms all that is bad into good. The moment a Russian world supporter/collaborator/enemy/FSB agent enters Serhiy Dumenko’s structure, they immediately cease to be any of those things and become an exemplary Ukrainian patriot, with no complaints from the OCU leadership, law enforcement, or radicals.
This means that the true goals of the OCU representatives are not liberation from “spiritual occupation” or a fight against the “Russian world” but simply the expansion of their structure. And it doesn’t matter what color the cat is…
