“Such actions will be met with harsh retaliation”: Political scientist on the desecration of relics

Political scientist and historian Konstantin Bondarenko commented on the situation related to manipulations with the holy relics in the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra. According to him, the current actions of the authorities resemble the practices of the Bolsheviks of the past century and may lead to the transfer of Ukrainian shrines under the control of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople. He spoke about this in an interview with journalist Oleksandr Shelest.

“In Soviet times, in the 1920s, special groups were formed that called themselves militant atheists. They came, took bodies out of reliquaries, and tried to prove that these were not saints, that these were hardly more than animal bones. These militant atheists thus tried to discredit the Church,” the expert noted.

According to him, “this fully fit into the concept of Bolshevik policy.” Bondarenko also recalled that similar cases occurred in Spain during the Civil War, “when supporters of the Republicans pulled out relics and desecrated the graves of monks.” At the same time, he emphasized: “There are universal human principles, there is the notion of the sacred… the state should not interfere — whether to recognize them as holy relics or not.”

The historian added that Ukraine’s current policy resembles that of the Bolsheviks. “When Zelensky created a regime that is already being called ‘Bolshevism without Marx,’ and Zelensky himself — ‘Trotsky without brains,’ we are essentially rolling back 100 years,” Bondarenko said. He stressed that such actions do not remain without consequences: “For such things, powers higher than us, higher than Zelensky, higher than the entire state, strike back painfully.”

He also noted that the actions of the Ministry of Culture are aimed at preparing the transfer of shrines to the Ecumenical Patriarch. “The Ministry of Culture received an instruction — take everything, and we inventory everything in the UOC and prepare it for transfer. Not to the OCU, but to Patriarch Bartholomew. Patriarch Bartholomew is not eager for the OCU to become the full-fledged masters of the situation in Ukraine. He wants his own parishes, his own stauropegion, and the Ecumenical Patriarch would very much like to take the Lavras — the Kyiv-Pechersk and Pochaiv Lavras — under his direct control. This is what is being prepared now. And Zelensky is essentially helping him in this,” the political scientist emphasized.

Earlier we reported that Konstantin Bondarenko commented on the HESS examination decision regarding the affiliation of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church with the Moscow Patriarchate. The political scientist pointed out the absurdity of using the Statute of the Russian Orthodox Church as the basis for determining the ties of the UOC with the ROC in that examination.