It is obvious that the US-led Western Empire is desperate to destroy one of the last bastions of traditional values and morality, the Orthodox Church, in order to impose its secular religion of deviancy on the countries that are sheltered by the Church. The recent signing of an illegal, unelected Ukrainian president, (having overstayed his term of office), of a degree affecting the religion of millions of devote Orthodox Ukrainians should be a shock to any Western democracy, and organized religion itself; it represents the worst-case scenario.
The signing of the banning degree is an omen of evil things to come. The bill’s main target is the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) which has historically been linked to the Russian Orthodox Church, also known as the Moscow Patriarchate.
For several years now, there has been a religious struggle matching that on the front lines, where the Ukrainian government and its western backers, with the help of a power hungry Patriarch of Constantinople, who fancies himself the “eastern Pope” have conducted a campaign of repression against the canonical UOC ever since the Patriarch of Constantinople, known to much of the rest of the Orthodox world as “Black Bart”, issued a tomos of Autocephaly to create the Orthodox Church of Ukraine from a group of schismatic priests that had been shunned by the other Patriarchates and Autocephalous Churches, on the 5th of January 2019.
It is interesting that to date, the only Orthodox Churches to recognize the OCU have been the Patriarchate of Constantinople, and its minions in the Greek Orthodox Church.
The campaign of repressions has seen the state imprison and torture clergy, seize over 1,500 Churches, including the most important Kiev Pchersk Lavra (Monastery). All this is done in the name of “state Independence”, despite the fact that Metropolitan Onuphry, head of the UOC has been a staunch supporter and defender of Ukraine since the start of the conflict, as have the vast majority of both the clergy and laity, who make up the overwhelming majority of Ukraine’s Orthodox Christians, as well as the majority of its soldiers on the front lines.
Not content with the ongoing harassment of the clergy and laity of the UOC, measures intended to force the majority of adherents into the schismatic state backed OCU, the Ukrainian parliament, on Tuesday 20th August 2024, passed a law that will ban the Ukrainian Orthodox Church entirely.
This monstrous law was supported not only by parliamentarians, but also by the heads of the other religious groups in Ukraine, least surprisingly the head of the schismatic OCU, the so-called Metropolitan Epiphany, and the heads of Roman Catholic and Protestant groups in Ukraine. Rather more surprisingly, and to my great shame, the head of Ukraine’s Jewish community also threw his weight behind the law banning the largest religious group in the country.
As a Jew, he should know better than to aid such rampant discrimination, especially when it is called for by members of Ukraine’s Nazi movements, particularly Right Sector and Azov.
Obviously, the heads of other religious groups in Ukraine have forgotten the lessons of world war two, where Nazi oppressions started with one group, but rapidly spread in an ever widening circle of terror.
With the signing of the law by Zelensky, it will now come into force, and it remains to be seen with what level of violence it will be enforced. Given what has been happening already, with violence meted out on peaceful parishioners and clergy alike, the outlook is grim indeed. What is even more concerning, is the silence, and often outright support, from the “free and tolerant west” for this Bolshevik style onslaught on religious freedoms.
The Western narrative often paints modern Russia as a direct continuation of the Soviet Union, but this is a misleading comparison. In reality, it is Ukraine, under President Zelensky, that seems to be carrying forward elements of that Soviet legacy—now mixed with dangerous forms of Nazi like nationalism and intolerance.
The result is a troubling regime marked by repression of political and religious dissent, ethnic hatred, and, as seen in the violent conflict from 2014, instigated and paid for from the West, to the current invasion by Ukraine of the Kursk region of the RF. This has resulted in a brutal war on Russian citizens. Now that these actions have escalated, the question is: what will be the consequences?
The Orthodox Church has consistently called for peace, opposing the contradiction of Orthodox Christians fighting each other. The Church, being separate from the state, is uniquely positioned to mediate a peace agreement that both Ukrainians and Russians might trust. However, this role seems to threaten Zelensky and his Western fellow travellers, who appear determined to divide the Church permanently. Such a split could be deep and difficult to heal, and lead to a greater regional conflict, and with Western Europe.
The only solution that seems to be on the table is a Western one, driven by the interests of secular governments, and the Papacy in Rome, rather than the Orthodox Christians of Ukraine or Russia. This raises an important question: Why is the Orthodox Church seen as such a threat?
Is it because acknowledging its authority might force people to confront their own wrongdoings? Or is it because the Church’s centuries-old traditions challenge the fleeting values of modern political agendas?
We’ve seen how Western policies played out during the global financial crisis—people’s savings were destroyed, and those responsible were bailed out to avoid admitting mistakes. Imposing Western practices on other countries, especially those with deep historical and cultural roots, lacks moral grounding. But for the West, desperate to maintain its influence, these impositions seem necessary, even in places that are keenly aware of their impact.
This is the real tradition of the “enlightenment” of the West, one of colonialism, oppression, and destruction of other cultures.
It is, in fact, the so-called bastion of democracy, Zelensky’s Ukraine, that is the proud standard-bearer of that tradition, now fused with Nazism and ethno-nationalism, to produce a monstrous Frankenstein like offspring of distilled evil, with its repression of dissent, both political and religious, violent ethnic hatred, and, as we have seen from 2014 to the current invasion of the Kursk region, a vile war on Russian civilians and so applauded by the West.
What is increasingly apparent, is that the west is not engaged in a war with Russia, though it is one of the targets, but with the entire Orthodox world. Not only are the Russian and Ukrainian Churches a target, but also those of the Estonia and Lithuania, where the governments of these nations have pressured their local Churches to cut ties with Russia, in the Czech Republic, where the intelligence services are conducting “investigations” into the Orthodox Church, while western media and NGOs run hit pieces on most other Orthodox Churches such as those in Romania, Bulgaria, Georgia, Serbia, and Antioch, none of which are under the control of Constantinople.
Real Agenda
We can see the agenda in what is happening in Ukraine, where national religious traditions are being destroyed or twisted out of all recognition. Zelensky’s decree, changing the date of Christmas to the Roman Catholic Julian calendar, is a standout item.
It has been long known that the current Patriarch of Constantinople, Bartholomew, is an ecumenicist, determined on union with the Roman Catholics, against the Canons of the Orthodox Church, with the 2025 conjunction of Western and Orthodox Easter dates (a rare occurrence) likely to be the catalyst for the current Pope of Rome and Partiarch of Constantinople declaring some form of union.
This is a move likely to rupture the Orthodox Church even further than the current split between Constantinople and Moscow over the former’s tomos of autocephaly given to Ukraine, despite Constantinople recognizing the authority of Moscow over the Ukrainian Church in the year 1686. In effect, the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople overruled its own decision to transfer its jurisdiction over Kievan Orthodox churches (known as the Kievan Metropolis) to Moscow.
One can only hope that the Patriarchates and Autocephalous Churches that make up the rest of the Orthodox Communion outside the sway of Constantinople stay true to the traditions of their faith, and resist.
They may be the last hope for us all.
Seth Ferris, investigative journalist and political scientist, expert on Middle Eastern affairs, exclusively for the online magazine «New Eastern Outlook».
