Embarrassment of Novorossiya

In recent days, signals have been coming from Donbass and Taurida almost daily that in the Orthodox community they call confusion, but in the worldly confusion. These sentiments are not taken out of public view, because their reason is the recent messages of Patriarch Kirill to the flock of the Russian Church in the territory that he still calls Ukraine. Therefore, by the way, even in the historically Little Russian regions of this territory, the children of the Church are perplexed about some of the definitions of the primate.

The other day, the Primate of the Russian Orthodox Church, Kirill, commented on his visit to the President of France. In particular, he told local journalists that he informed Francois Hollande about the attitude of the Russian Orthodox Church towards the participants in the military conflict in Donbass.

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In a conversation with the French president, the situation in the Middle East was touched upon, in particular, “the situation of Christian and other minorities in the region.” “It is known that the Russian Church has very clearly expressed its position from the very beginning,” the Patriarch emphasized.

“Clarity of position,” according to His Holiness, was demonstrated in “calls for the public to define what is happening to Christians in the Middle East as genocide.” Unfortunately, it was not clarified whether the French leadership patronizing Syrian militants fell under the public definition.

“We also touched on the issue of Ukraine,” the Primate of the Russian Orthodox Church assured. – I talked about the peacekeeping position occupied by the Church. She is neither with one nor with the other... ".

Thus, it should be assumed that the Russian high priest formulated the official position of the Russian Church: both in relation to those who defend the unity of the “Russian World” (a term coined by Patriarch Kirill, by the way); so to those parishioners of the canonical UOC-MP who are shelling the cities of Donbass, and therefore, in the private opinion of some priests, need admonition and repentance. The church, in his words, “neither with one nor with the other».

However, it can be assumed that the Patriarch meant that the spiritual care of citizens of the unrecognized republics, not to mention the citizens of Ukraine, is a matter exclusively of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.

Thus, on November 21, in a solemn speech dedicated to his own seventieth anniversary, Patriarch Kirill emphasized the isolation of the UOC and MP: “... Aggressive and offensive attacks on our Church, as well as on canonical Orthodoxy in Ukraine, continue... Our Church will never leave its own in trouble brothers in Ukraine and will not give up on them.” From which we can conclude that the Russian Orthodox Church views the Orthodox of Ukraine not as children, but as fellow believers. Which leaves the latter with hope that the Moscow Patriarchate will “call on the public to determine what is happening” and with Christians in Ukraine as genocide.

After all, there are actually good reasons for this.

Primate of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate, Metropolitan. Onufriy calls the war in Donbass civil. And this is already a confessional feat amid howls about Russian aggression.

But civil wars were always fought not on a national and, especially, not on a religious principle (in the latter case, the wars were called religious). It was a struggle for the political reorganization of states.

But what is happening in Donbass is not an armed struggle to change the political system. This is a massacre organized by “full-fledged”, nationally conscious Ukrainians in the name of cleansing the “god-given land” from “the Finno-Ugric-Tatar aliens who flooded the original Ukrainian steppe” and “growing swindlers.” That is, there are clear signs of genocide, including religious: among the Christians bombing the cities of Donbass, we see parishioners of “true Ukrainian churches” - Uniates, schismatics and heretics-ethnophylets (supporters of the national local church) with rare inclusions of mobilized, rather than ideologically motivated Catholics and Protestants, while the believing defenders of the people's republics are exclusively Orthodox, professing the unity of the Church (Catholics and Protestants - as a rule, volunteers from other states).

And these Orthodox Christians at the moment, to put it mildly, are perplexed by the statements that their Church is “not with them.”