"Zelensky is on a business trip, Yelensky is sick, and Zaporizhzhya NPP will be blown up": the head of the OCU under various excuses refused the commission of the Phanar to come to Ukraine

For almost two years now, the head of the OCU, Epiphany Dumenko, has been sabotaging the arrival in Ukraine of a delegation of the Patriarchate of Constantinople, which Patriarch Bartholomew had intended to send to the country several times to try to resolve the Ukrainian church crisis. However, the representatives of the OCU, represented by Epiphany Dumenko and Yevstratiy Zoria, came up with various excuses to prevent the Phanar delegation from entering Ukraine. This is reported by the Greek church publication Romfea.

«Repeated attempts by the Holy Synod (of the Patriarchate of Constantinople — Ed.) to send a commission to Ukraine failed due to the fault of the Ukrainian side. Once, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew was told that it was impossible to receive the delegation because of the threat of a nuclear explosion at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. Another time, it was reported that it was impossible to receive the commission in Kyiv because President Zelensky was on a business trip and V. Yelensky, who was responsible for relations with religious organizations, was ill,» — the publication reports.

Moreover, Romfea reports that in 2023, Volodymyr Zelenskyy tried to ask for the status of patriarchy for the OCU, but now the attitude of the Office of the President of Ukraine to the OCU has changed dramatically. All this is due to the destructive activities of the OCU representatives and the unwillingness to form a real dialogue with the UOC.

«There are assumptions that President of Ukraine V. Zelensky, at a meeting with Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew on July 8, 2023, directly asked him to appoint Metropolitan Emmanuel as head of the commission instead of Archbishop Hilarion and to grant the Autocephalous Church of Ukraine the status of Patriarchate. Today, due to the complication of the military-religious situation, new faces have appeared in President Zelensky’s entourage, and the position of the Ukrainian authorities is changing every day. Already, sources from Ukraine report that the Phanar is receiving complaints from the Ukrainian authorities that Metropolitan Epifaniy is not doing anything to unite the churches, but, on the contrary, is preventing it. The violent seizure of churches by supporters of the UOC with the use of weapons and tear gas and mass beatings of believers made it impossible to engage in a dialogue with the Ukrainian Church, while consolidating its believers and turning them against the OCU. As of 2018, not one of the 100 bishops of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church has joined the OCU, and the seized churches are empty because there is no one to serve in them,» — Romfea added.