He was responding to UPC monks being told on Friday to vacate the premises they used in the Cave Monastery in Kiev, considered the de facto most important center of Eastern Slavic Christianity, by March 23. Their way was issued by the Acting General Director of the Kyiv-Pecherszka Lavra National Protected Area, on the grounds that the men’s monastery had violated the terms of the agreement concluded in 2013 on the free use of the state-owned institution, which was terminated for this reason.
“Does the US State Department know regarding this? In general, the competent department of the US State Department reacts vigorously to the facts of religious oppression. This time, it will not be possible for the states to “not see” the persecution of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church,” the spokesperson wrote.
Vladimir Legojda, the head of the Moscow Patriarchate’s synodal department responsible for social and media relations, also called the call to the monks to leave the cave monastery illegal on Telegram.
“This decision is the height of illegality. Of the lawlessness that has been perpetrated once morest millions of faithful Ukrainians in recent years,” Legojda wrote on his Telegram channel.
He believed that the expulsion of the UPC from the cave monastery would go down in the history of church persecution.
Until recently, there were basically two Orthodox churches in competition with each other in Ukraine: the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UPC), branded pro-Moscow by the Kyiv leadership and considered canonical by Moscow, which left the jurisdiction of the Moscow Patriarchate with the decision of its synod on May 27, 2022, and the Ukrainian government-backed Orthodox Church of Ukraine (PCU), which received autocephaly from Constantinople in 2019.
Although it turned away from the Moscow Patriarchate due to Russia’s war in Ukraine, this did not save the UPC – the most populous denomination in Ukraine before the war – from the Ukrainian government withdrawing from it the right to lease the Pechersk Lavra, which was nationalized in Soviet times. In the Cathedral of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary of the Cave Monastery in Kiev, this year’s Orthodox Christmas ceremonies might already be held by the PCU united with the state aid.
Metropolitan Antony (Sevryuk) of Volokalamsk, chairman of the department of external church relations of the Russian Orthodox Church, pointed out in his online speech at the meeting of the UN Security Council (UNSC) on January 18 that only in 2022, 129 churches of the UPC were occupied, while at the same time the church’s new communities its legal registration was completely prevented. The Metropolitan reminded him that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy – in violation of the constitution – deprived several bishops of the UPC of their citizenship, which he called “a form of political oppression”. He complained that the Security Service of Ukraine (SZBU) had searched UPC churches and that there was a “smear campaign” once morest him in the Ukrainian media, aggravated by calls for violence and hate speech.
Dmitry Polyansky, the first deputy of Russia’s ambassador to the UN, announced on Friday on his Telegram channel that Moscow requested the convening of the Security Council on Tuesday in the case of anti-Russian sentiment in Ukraine. According to the diplomat, Russophobia should be discussed “as a factor hindering the search for long-term and sustainable solutions to the Ukrainian crisis”. Polyansky announced that the names of the speakers, in their protection, would only be made public on the eve of the event.
