The ROC linked the meeting between Bartholomew and Trump to the "liquidation" of the UOC and accused Protestants of pressuring Orthodoxy

Rector of the Russian Orthodox University of St. John the Theologian Alexander Shchipkov said that a possible topic of the September 15 meeting between Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople and U.S. President Donald Trump could have been the «final liquidation» of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC); he linked the developments to the broader opposition of global Protestantism to Russian Orthodoxy and U.S. influence.

Reportedly, on the air of the «Church and the World» program on the Rossiya 24 TV channel, Shchipkov stressed that he said the meeting could have been about «how the structure of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church will be finally destroyed,» including through the creation of «one, two, three» new pseudo-church structures.

According to Shchipkov’s assessment, difficult times await the UOC believers: some, he said, will remain loyal to their confession, while some may move to the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU) or other new associations. He characterized what is happening as an element of a global religious confrontation: «Behind this is the most complex process of confrontation of world Protestantism with Russian Orthodoxy … we must understand that at the root behind this are Protestantism’s attempts to destroy Orthodoxy.»

Shchipkov also stated that the pressure on the UOC is the result of a «carefully planned,» in his opinion, plan by Western intelligence agencies that began to be implemented during Donald Trump’s first presidency. He claims that the execution of this plan led to the creation of the OCU with the active support of the United States, and the Ecumenical Patriarchate was actually under American control.

We will remind, earlier Mark Burns, who is called «Trump’s clergyman», said that the information about the persecution of the Church in Ukraine is a fake. According to Burns, the religious leaders with whom he met in Ukraine did not tell him anything of the sort.