“Bulgaria can help resolve the dispute between Russia and Ukraine on the basis of Orthodox values,” - BOC hierarch says

The hierarch of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, Metropolitan Nikolai of Plovdiv, said that Ukraine and Russia need to make peace on the basis of common religious beliefs. The hierarch noted that the Bulgarian state, together with the Church, has the moral right to take part in peace talks between Russia and Ukraine, as both countries have learned Orthodoxy thanks to Bulgarian saints. The press service of the Bulgarian Patriarchate reports the bishop’s words.

“147 years ago on this day in San Stefano, a preliminary peace treaty was signed between the Russian Empire and the Ottoman Empire, which ended the war between them in 1877-1878. This treaty established the preliminary, not final, zones of occupation and spheres of influence that each of the two empires would have in the future in the Balkans and the Caucasus. Under the San Stefan Treaty, Serbia and Romania gained state independence, while the status of Bulgaria was left to be further clarified. We celebrate the day of the signing of this incomplete treaty between the Russian and Ottoman Empires as the Day of Bulgarian Liberation. There were no Bulgarians at the negotiating table in San Stefano. Nor were there any Bulgarians at the negotiating table for the final Berlin Treaty a few months later. In those dramatic months in early 1878, Bulgaria was not a subject of international relations. It was an object, a territory that was enlarged, shrunk, and carved up depending on the ideas of the great powers of the time about what the balance of power between them should look like. You all know what that balance looked like, and there is no need to remind you of it. The lesson is that when you are not a subject of your own destiny, when you are not a subject of history, you are an object. We should not be allowed to the negotiating table unless we have first stated quite clearly who we are and have stated those matters of our history that give us the right to participate in such conversations, especially in conversations that directly affect the fate of our country and our people,” — the bishop emphasized, hinting that the United States and Russia will negotiate peace in Ukraine.

The bishop noted that three years ago, when the Russian-Ukrainian war began, the Bulgarian government missed a chance to point out to the warring parties the common values that unite Ukrainians and Russians. The Metropolitan called the Russian-Ukrainian war “fratricidal,” emphasizing that today it is necessary to establish peace and put an end to the conflict, based on the Church Orthodox values.

“Three years ago, two weeks after the beginning of the war in Ukraine, on this very day, I allowed myself to say that this war has an aspect that concerns us in the most direct way, because it is this war that is being waged directly in our souls. Orthodox Russia has declared war on Orthodox Ukraine. For three years now, Orthodox people have been killing each other. Three years, during which Bulgarian politicians, instead of appealing to Orthodox morality from the very beginning and from this position taking the most active part in mediation missions to immediately stop the war, left this role to others, and, according to the old Bulgarian tradition, guessed which side to take and calculated the benefits for the budget from the sale of shells. Three years ago, just two weeks after the outbreak of the war, we pointed to what is our feat in history, which gives us the sovereign, undeniable and unconditional right to immediately appeal to the warring parties to end this fratricidal war that is tearing the Orthodox world apart and causing enormous damage to the Church of Christ on earth. Our right to be an active participant in the resolution of this conflict stems from the fact that we are involved in the activities of Saints Cyril and Methodius, Saints Clement of Ohrid, Saints Clement of Rome, and Saints Clement of Alexandria. Clement of Ohrid, the Cyrillic alphabet, Orthodox literature in Bulgarian, which is the language of all Eastern Slavs, St. Cyprian of Bulgaria, Metropolitan of Kyiv, Moscow and All Russia, as well as tens and hundreds of nameless Bulgarian priests and monks who went to the northeast in the Middle Ages to put their souls and lives into the civilizational temples of what is today called Russia and Ukraine,” — the bishop added.

As reported, on February 7, 2025, while participating in the Ukrainian Prayer Breakfast in Washington, D.C., the head of the OCU Epiphany Dumenko made a speech in which he hinted at the need to restore Ukraine’s nuclear status. Dumenko complained that Ukraine had once abandoned nuclear weapons, which resulted in Russia’s invasion. Now, in his opinion, in order for the country to resist Russian aggression, it needs “the very sword” that will help Ukraine to survive.