MOSCOW. The persecution of Ukraine’s main Christian denomination has turned into a PR debacle for Zelensky and his tyrannical regime. Powerful voices with enormous and influential audiences denounce it - Tucker Carlson, Glenn Greenwald, Elon Musk, Alex Jones, and many others, yet there is no letup. The horror of the genocide and war crimes in Gaza have pushed it from the headlines, yet the crackdowns and brutality continue.
Western reaction and discussion reveal deep misunderstandings of the reality on the ground in Ukraine, of Ukrainian and Russian history, and the nature of Zelensky’s regime and of Christianity itself, and are, in my opinion, very superficial. They are usually limited to the above critics concluding that: ‘Z isn’t a democrat after all’, ‘He’s a bad guy’, and ‘here’s another reason why we shouldn’t be supporting him’.
What they don’t understand is that Zelensky is acting completely rationally, and really has no other choice, and no amount of PR blowback in the West would justify changing course. They don’t realize that the Ukrainian church truly IS a security threat to Kiev. Despite all the talk of it being wholly autonomous, and loyal to the Ukrainian regime, this is not really true, or even possible, on both a spiritual and rational level.
The confusion stems from a lack of knowledge of Russian and ‘Ukrainian’ ethnicity, history, the powerful role of Christianity in both countries, and the nature of Christianity.
First, the ethnic misperception. It persists even among most in the West who sympathize with Russia in this conflict, who see the inherent evil of the Zelensky regime and its globalist puppet-masters in the US. The names I mentioned above, and many other prominent critics - think Mearsheimer, Ritter, the Duran, MacGregor, etc, routinely refer to ‘the Ukrainian people’, as if this were an ethnicity, nationality, or identity in the usual understanding of the term. But it most profoundly is not, and this is one of the first lies which must be discarded in order to understand why church repression is the logical policy for comrade Zelensky.
By every measure of what defines ‘a people’ - language, religion, DNA, shared centuries-long history, shared military sacrifice and glory, past rulers and prominent figures, historic foes, shared tragedy and shared triumph, economic ties, family ties, literature, culture, architecture, cuisine, etc, the people inhabiting what is currently called ‘Ukraine’ are one with Russia. It is complete nonsense to believe otherwise. The same is true of Belarus.
The current political borders are artificial and arbitrary, the result of political serendipity at two junctures, first in the effectively meaningless interior boundaries established during the early years of the USSR, and second the political borders willy-nilly decided on by a handful of communist party hacks representing no one in 1991. The people were never asked what country they wanted to be a part of, rather presented with a fait accompli. That is all these borders represent, and they contradict the preceding 400 years of the formation of the Russian state and people. Many in the West still don’t fully grasp this.
This is a huge problem for the Kiev regime, which is not Russian, rather Jewish, a pure creature of a Jewish globalist criminal enterprise which holds sway in the US and Europe. This alien and oppressive regime has to do everything it can to tamp down the above truth, hence all the blarney about the ‘Ukrainian’ language (it’s fake), ‘Ukrainian’ literature (non-existent), ‘Ukrainian’ this and that. It’s all fake, invented, and a rather perfect example of the endless lies churned out by Western elites about practically every aspect of life.
For the receipts on just how fake the ‘Ukrainian language’ is, paste ‘украинский язык искусственный’ (Ukrainian language fake) into Yandex search and browse the results using Google Translate. Russian scholars have exhaustively demolished that particular lie.
The above truth is Russia’s ultimate advantage in the whole Ukraine debacle, because when the end comes for these alien occupiers, and it seems to be fast approaching, these fraternal bonds will erupt, and all those ‘Ukrainian nationalists’, will either experience a dramatic change of heart, or hightail it out of Dodge. Their Jewish kommissars will be the first to flee.
Of all the elements listed above which define people, in Russia’s case, the most galvanizing and defining is their faith, to a much greater extent than most countries. It is literally the glue which kept Russia together during the centuries prior to the revolution. It teaches that it is the only reason Russia exists at all, time and again rescuing her from certain destruction. It has a pantheon of saints and holy men (none of whom spoke ‘Ukrainian’, although many of them lived there), who all said the same thing - that the Russian people have a special role to play in history, and that role is defined by their Orthodox Christianity. It was the state ideology for centuries, with the Tsars understanding themselves, and the people agreeing, as caretakers and defenders of Orthodox Christianity, first and foremost. The Russian state, people, and culture mark their emergence as such from their conversion to Christianity 1000 years ago.
One so often hears the line that America and Israel are the only countries in the world founded on ideas, well add Russia to the list. That idea was Christianity, a rather more compelling, appealing, comprehensive and well-defined intellectual home than America’s or Israel’s. Indeed, there has been much talk over the past 15 years here that Russia suffers from not having a ‘national idea’, an official ideology, having come up with nothing since the disposal of communism other than ‘patriotism’, and ‘prosperity.’ The obvious answer is right in front of their noses, it is Christianity, as it always was save for the communist interregnum. Nothing else makes any sense here.
So Zelensky has no choice, really. Christians are de facto a threat to his power. And no protest from them that they are loyal, that they support the war, that they are completely autonomous from the Russian church, etc, etc, mean much, because, first of all, they are made at the business end of an M16, and second, they contradict common sense. Everyone in Ukraine and Russia understands this, most of all Zelensky and his thugs, who are acting completely rationally. Of course most Ukrainian priests, bishops, and faithful will harbor pro-Russian sympathies, even if they try to hide them, and it would be naive to think they don’t. And so, the dismantling of the church must happen. It is essential to maintaining power. No amount of PR damage in the West can outweigh this simple power calculus.
Besides national identity, another obvious threat from the church, a fact inconvenient to the demons of this world, is that Christianity commands its children to not bear false witness, to cleave to the truth, as best one can, to push back against lies and evil, even when it brings persecution and suffering. The Zelensky regime is on the wrong end of that see-saw. It is another very powerful reason for honest Christians in Ukraine not to support him, and be prime candidates for pro-Russian sentiments.
The final piece of the equation is the Jewish character of the Zelensky regime, which disposes it to hate all things Christian and Russian, to seek to destroy Christianity at every opportunity, to see it as its ultimate enemy. In this, Zelensky is squarely on the side of his predecessors in persecuting the Russian people, the Bolsheviks. Both elements are Jewish, and both have an innate hatred for Christianity. Zelensky’s neocon paymasters in DC and London hate Christianity no less than he does, demonstrated by their own domestic policies, whose example only eggs him on.
Zelensky is in fact at a great disadvantage, because when you repress Christianity, it only gains resilience, like pushing a beach ball underwater, so while politically expedient, even necessary, short-term, it will only hurt him long-term. He can’t resort to full-on savage annihilation and terror like his Bolshevik soulmates, and all this repression will achieve is spiritual strengthening of the very force he fears most. When the end comes, and come it will, it will hasten his demise and revilement by the narod (people). He must know this, but he probably doesn’t care, because, in my opinion, and again this is underappreciated in the West, the whole conflict has been first and foremost a grift, a massive embezzlement scheme ending with Zelensky and his co-conspirators finding great solace among their gold-plated tableware somewhere in ZOGistan.
The confusion and misperceptions about these facts in the West (but not in Russia or ‘Ukraine’) stem from a lack of knowledge of Russian history, almost complete ignorance about the history, role, and teaching of Orthodox Christianity in the Russian empire and today, and a lack of appreciation of how important Christian concepts are in world affairs. They are relegated to an ‘also mention’, when in fact they are central.
So the repressions will continue until the collapse comes. Trumped up charges against priests and bishops, shoving of grannies out of their cherished sanctuaries by burly nationalists, hounding of monks from monasteries, occasional torture and incarceration, confiscation of property and relics, desecration of altars, military targeting of churches, the odd murder or arson. You can find the daily blow by blow of the ugliness on orthochristian.com and elsewhere if you want to keep up with it.
Trying to understand political events without a Christian worldview leaves one perplexed and confused, wondering how things ever degenerated to such a tragic mess. Don the armor of God, and it all makes perfect sense.