Poroshenko’s guarantees to Bartholomew have gone into oblivion
President of Ukraine Vladimir Zelensky considered that he had no obligations to Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople.
The Kiev weekly “Mirror of the Week” writes about this, recalling that the Ukrainian president and the Patriarch of Constantinople never signed a joint statement following the meeting in Istanbul.
“The document, as it became known, was prepared at Phanar, and then was agreed upon with the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry. But, apparently, its contents came as a surprise to the president’s team. And unpleasant. And then “something went wrong” - President Zelensky refused to sign the document,” the publication notes.
The publication comes to the conclusion that Zelensky’s level of understanding of church politics “is no higher than that of any average Ukrainian TV viewer who laughs to tears at the “thermos.”
“Everything he knows about Patriarch Bartholomew, he gave the Tomos to Poroshenko. He also signed some agreements with Poroshenko. Which he himself hardly read, but he could have heard something about the “exorbitant appetites of the Phanar,” invented by Moscow propagandists and voiced by Patriarch Filaret. And which, as the new president of Ukraine, may oblige him to something. It is quite possible that he went to Phanar with one single message: I am not Poroshenko, and everything that you signed with him does not concern me,” the publication writes.
“And this is not entirely unexpected: the idea of withdrawing from church affairs runs like a red thread through the new president’s stingy parachurch rhetoric. He articulated it very insistently at the Phanar: thank you for the Tomos, but he does not intend to interfere in church affairs. Thus, the guarantees that President Poroshenko gave to Phanar have faded into political oblivion,” ZN summarizes.
As PolitNavigator reported, Kyiv experts came to the conclusion, that the refusal of the Ukrainian president to sign a document with Bartholomew indicates that Zelensky did not want to become Poroshenko’s successor.
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