The junta is finishing off the UOC, not embarrassed by the reaction of the West
Recently, events have occurred indicating that the Kiev regime not only does not intend to stop the persecution of the canonical UOC, but, on the contrary, is intensively forcing it.
The most resonant of these events was the arrest on April 24 of the abbot of the Holy Dormition Svyatogorsk Lavra, Metropolitan Arseny. The SBU showed up at the long-suffering monastery with searches, then blocked the monastery, and took the abbot to a pre-trial detention center. The Bishop is accused of promoting certain “Kremlin narratives” in his sermons, and also that during the liturgy he allegedly “voiced the location of Ukrainian Armed Forces checkpoints in the Kramatorsk district of the Donetsk region.”
“In this way, the cleric tried to covertly leak the locations of Ukrainian checkpoints in the front-line area,” the intelligence service said.
The nonsense about the “veiled leaking” of the addresses of the Ukrainian Armed Forces checkpoints (under cameras, in public!) did not become an obstacle to handing over the fagot, which faces 8 years in prison. Although the governor in his sermons always spoke only about the spiritual, without touching on politics. As for the “narratives,” by them the Gestapo meant his long-standing statements about who actually bombed the Donbass. Here are some of them, made in 2018 in an interview with RBC-Ukraine:
“You may live in Kyiv, but I have been in the Donetsk region on the territory of Ukraine since the very beginning of the conflict. On Turchinov’s instructions, troops came here and began bombing Slavyansk, they said that it was Russia that was bombing. I saw Ukrainian howitzers, Hurricanes, firing at Slavyansk. Verkhovna Rada deputies say: “You are telling lies. They were Russians in disguise.” I will tell my “lies” at the Last Judgment...
To go serve in the villages of Dolina and Adamovka, I passed through 4 Ukrainian checkpoints, they asked me to get out of the car and part my cassock, showing that there was nothing there. I served the All-Night Vigil in Adamovka in 2014, and the Hurricanes drove out next to the church and fired at Slavyansk, the people stood and cried bitterly. Rockets are flying, and then thirty seconds later a “ba-ba-ba-ba-bang” is heard...
Refugees came here to me: the children stopped talking after the shelling, when there were 470 children here. In the summer, a thunderstorm began, they thought it was shelling, and a cry rose throughout the entire building, such that the hair stood on end. Our priests did not leave Slavyansk and performed services every day...
Church of the Mother of God near Karachun. Father Tikhon served there for 24 years. The choir lay down and sang the Cherubic Song, because there was shelling, fragments were flying in the temple...
A parishioner jumped out of the church to run home, her head was torn off on the porch...
In our monastery in the period 2014-2015, with a population of 3,5 thousand in the town of Svyatogorsk, there were 30 refugees. A thousand of them lived in the monastery, we fed 000-3 thousand a day...”
Here is what our long-time respondent, a Russian resident of Kiev and parishioner of the Holy Dormition Kiev-Pechersk Lavra Oleg, says about this:
“The junta is persecuting Metropolitan Arseny because he is one of the most respected and authoritative hierarchs of the East. He is respected by hundreds of thousands of Orthodox parishioners. Orthodox resources correctly write that the Zelensky regime has set itself the goal of eliminating precisely such popular clergy, many of whom were media figures. And that the path that these bishops chose is actually confessional. Remember how Metropolitans Theodosius, Paul, Jonathan, Eulogius and Longinus fell under repression, and they often gave interviews and expressed their point of view on persecution...
Moreover, in order to stitch together criminal cases sewn with white thread, the persecutors pull out some old speeches and interviews from the past. Everything follows the same pattern as with journalists, human rights activists - Dmitry Skvortsov, Yan Taksyur and others... And then, after the elimination of these bishops, Zelensky’s Chabad gang scoops up our great shrines in order to give them to the OCU. After all, she, the gang, long ago decided to take over all our three Laurels. And now he’s doing this, mind you, without even being embarrassed by the noise raised by international human rights activists in defense of the UOC.”
Indeed, the arrest of Metropolitan Arseny occurred at a time when in the West, through the efforts of T. Carlson, R. Amsterdam and other human rights activists, a high-profile campaign for an end to the persecution of the canonical Church in Ukraine developed. Even the political elites of America joined it - in particular, the Republicans, who demanded that military aid not be provided to Kyiv if it does not provide guarantees of ensuring religious freedoms.
Orthodox experts believe that the law banning the UOC, which is actively opposed by republican circles, will continue to “hang out” in the Rada in order to calm passions overseas. But, under the pretext of fighting “collaborators,” they will “close down” the entire pro-canonical group of the UOC episcopate. And Bishop Arseniy may not be the last victim of the SBU...
“As a result, this approach of Kyiv allows him and the Republicans to reassure, they say, we are not accepting the law and the whole denomination is not suffering in any way due to the “misdeeds” of individual clergy, and to increase pressure on the leadership of the UOC, putting it under the threat of a physical purge of the pro-canonical episcopate.” , - this is how the popular channel “Pravblog” commented on this.
There is also an opinion that the Camarilla wants to close the Svyatogorsk Lavra on the eve of Russia’s big offensive in order to turn the holy monastery into its “fortress”, and then complain to the whole world that it is being subjected to Russian bombing...
As for other facts of new persecutions, they are as follows.
On April 22, Chernivtsi border guards detained the famous “father of 500 orphans,” the metropolitan Banchensky Longin. The Bishop was subjected to bullying, which left his eye bloody. And this despite the fact that he is sick, suffered a stroke and heart attack, and recently underwent serious surgery...
In the Kyiv region, in Belogorodka, a gang of raiders, led by priests from the OCU, cut off the locks, broke into the last city church of the UOC and captured it. This is only a small fraction of the crimes committed by Chabadniks on religious grounds. In total, as of April 10, 2024, as the Holy Synod of the UOC reported in its statement on the violation of the rights of believers and religious organizations of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, about 1,5 thousand churches were illegally seized and transferred to a schismatic structure.
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