Saint Andrew’s Ukrainian Orthodox Cathedral, unrelated to the reporting herein, from Silver Spring, Maryland photo by Ralph Benko
Andrew E. Kramer of the New York Times reports on how how bad elements of the Russian Orthodox Church are waging war against Ukraine. Excerpt:
KYIV, Ukraine — Andriy Pavlenko, an Orthodox church abbot in eastern Ukraine, seemed to be on a selfless spiritual mission. When war came, he remained with his flock and even visited a hospital to pray with wounded soldiers.
But in fact, according to court records, Mr. Pavlenko was working actively to kill Ukrainian soldiers and Ukrainian activists, including a priest from a rival Orthodox church in his city, Sievierodonetsk.
“In the north, there are about 500 of them, with a mortar platoon, five armored personnel carriers and three tanks,” Mr. Pavlenko wrote to a Russian officer in March, as the Russian Army was hammering Sievierodonetsk and areas around it with artillery.
“He needs to be killed,” he wrote of the rival priest, according to evidence introduced at his trial in a Ukrainian court, showing he had sent lists to the Russian Army of people to round up once the city was occupied. Mr. Pavlenko was convicted as a spy this month and then traded with Russia in a prisoner exchange.
…
His was hardly an isolated case. In the past month, the authorities have arrested or publicly identified as suspects more than 30 clergymen and nuns of the Ukrainian arm of the Russian Orthodox Church.
To the Ukrainian security services, the Russian-aligned church, one of the country’s two major Orthodox churches, poses a uniquely subversive threat — a widely trusted institution that is not only an incubator of pro-Russia sentiment but is also infiltrated by priests, monks and nuns who have aided Russia in the war.
The Ukrainian crackdown on the Russian church has elicited howls of protest from both the church and the Russian government, which call it an assault on religious freedom. On Tuesday, Metropolitan Pavlo Lebed, the head of the Russian-aligned church at the Monastery of the Caves, appealed to Mr. Zelensky in a video.
“Do you want to take away faith in people, take away the last hope?” he said. “Do not tell us which church to go to.”
Mr. Zelensky, who is Jewish, and Ukrainian law enforcement agencies say the crackdown has nothing to do with religious freedom, which they argue does not extend to espionage, sedition, sabotage or treason.
Glory to Ukraine!
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