The message of war
Volodymyr Zelenskyy made another speech in the Verkhovna Rada with another plan. Out of all the populist things he said, religious observers drew attention to what the head of state said about religious policy in Ukraine. Zelensky said that the state would develop cooperation with all religious organizations except the UOC. For the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, “time has run out.”
It must be said that these words of Zelensky’s are not empty talk. We understand that the head of state does not write the texts of his speeches on his own. For this purpose, there are speechwriters who try to put all the most important accents in the text of the president’s speech, which will be noticed by those to whom this speech is addressed.
In this case, the Church has been given another “black mark” indicating that the government will no longer try to resolve the church conflict in Ukraine by reconciling the UOC with the OCU. Moreover, neither the Patriarchate of Constantinople nor any other patriarchate will help in the situation. And not because it makes no sense. But because the church issue is one of the points of conflict, which, apparently, no one is going to end.
We have previously expressed the opinion that the election of Trump to the presidency of the United States is unlikely to have any impact on the position of the Ukrainian authorities regarding the UOC. The Church and its people will become a kind of “Ukrainian Uighurs” in Ukraine, whose rights are violated in the world, but no one cares about their problems, since political and economic dividends are higher than the interests of a single social group, even if it makes up half the country’s population. And no one is even more interested in this if the government of this country has set a course to develop the conflict and put pressure on all the painful “calluses” of its opponents, including, unfortunately, the UOC.
Unfortunately, it is not the first time that we have received information from various dioceses of the UOC that the ruling bishops are warning priests about a possible surge in aggression against the Church, which will lead to the loss of religious buildings, registration, and the basic right to worship. We already have examples that confirm that it costs nothing for the authorities to seize any church in any locality, regardless of how many parishioners there are and how active they are.
The same “team” group of touring raiders can seize UOC churches one by one, simply moving from place to place. In addition, the regional and city authorities have been given an unspoken instruction to stop “playing democracy” with the UOC. Whatever they can take away will be taken away. Wherever the Church can be expelled, it will be expelled. And this process will intensify as “bad news” from the fronts appears, which, apparently, will be more and more.
Zelensky, in his speech, actually made it clear that no one is going to end the war, and also pointed to those who will be “beaten” inside the country at this time to draw the “righteous anger” of society on them for any political or military defeats. Yes. The time of the UOC is over. But what is even more frightening, given all these processes, is that it may turn out that this time has passed not only for the UOC, but also for the country, which could have become a dream state but missed this opportunity.