KYIV – The sprawling 11th century Monastery of the Caves, or Pecherska Lavra, was getting ready for Easter according to the Julian calendar.
On the grounds utilized mostly by the Ukrainian branch of the Russian Orthodox Church, monks, seminarians as well as gardeners were seen clipping tree branches, tending greenery and trim-painting the grounds on April 4, when The Ukrainian Weekly visited the UNESCO cultural heritage site.
Allegedly, the 54-acre spiritual community and museum compound, which includes a hotel for pilgrims and other visitors, was also home to Russian paramilitaries and Ukrainian collaborators before Moscow annexed Crimea and invaded the Donbas in February-April 2014.
Here is where Russian high-ranking military officer Igor Girkin, as well as other comrades in arms, allegedly stayed in January 2014 prior to Russia’s invasion, according to Ukrainian media outlets like censor.net and TSN channel, citing state security officers.
A separate New York Times story published on September 6, 2014, stated that “evidence has begun to accumulate of close ties between the church, or at least individual Orthodox priests, and the pro-Russian cause.”
The Ukrainian Orthodox Church – Moscow Patriarchate (UOC-MP) strenuously denied affiliation with separatist movements in Ukraine in a telephone interview with The Ukrainian Weekly on April 5.
UOC-MP spokesperson Archbishop Klyment (Oleh Vecherya) also denied that Mr. Girkin had ever stayed on church premises “in Kyiv.”
A native Muscovite, Mr. Girkin is credited with starting Russia’s covert invasion of the Donbas in April 2014 when he led paramilitaries in the takeover of the Donetsk Oblast city of Sloviansk. His men also were responsible for the Donbas war’s first casualties on April 13, 2014. An armed unit ambushed a group of Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) servicemen sent on a reconnaissance mission to the outskirts of Sloviansk during which Cpt. Hennadiy Bilychenko was killed.
Crimea native Serhiy Zhurikov was part of the ambush unit, according to a July 17, 2016, reconstruction of the Donbas war’s first battle published by censor.net. He allegedly found shelter at the Pecherska Lavra along with Mr. Girkin just months before the war.
www.censor.net
Moscow native Igor Girkin, a former high-ranking military intelligence officer, being blessed in the Donetsk Oblast city of Sloviansk by a priest affiliated with the Ukrainian branch of the Russian Orthodox Church in 2014 after leading Russia’s takeover of the city.
A former military intelligence officer, Mr. Girkin was also allegedly in charge of providing security for a Christian artifact from Mount Athos in Greece four months earlier at the behest of the UOC-MP while it was showcased in-country in various cities. His alleged comrade-in-arms, Mr. Zhurikov, was the “official” photographer during the artifact’s exposition in Ukraine, according to the censor.net article.
In a YouTube video dated January 24, 2014, for example, Mr. Girkin is seen inside a Ukrainian church while visitors pay homage to the artifact.
It was cover that he and his accomplices purportedly used in January 2014 to gather intelligence ahead of the Kremlin’s invasion of Crimea in late February and the Donbas in April of that year, according to an interview that TSN channel conducted in May 2014 with an undercover officer of the SBU – Ukraine’s counterintelligence agency.
Mr. Girkin first took part in annexing Crimea before leaving the Ukrainian peninsula for the Donbas military foray, Ukrainian authorities say.
The Ukrainian branch of the Russian Orthodox Church now calls the Donbas war an “aggression,” without naming Moscow for stoking it or being involved in any way. In a dozen YouTube videos screened by The Ukrainian Weekly of UOC-MP priests speaking publicly, including during liturgies, the war has been described as a “civil war” or a conflict “between brothers.”
A similar description of the war has been voiced by Verkhovna Rada national deputy and Russian native Vadim Novinsky. Ex-President Viktor Yanukovych granted him citizenship in 2012. He won a seat in Parliament as a single-mandate candidate representing the Crimean city of Sevastopol a year later during a by-election; he is currently part of the Opposition Bloc, an offshoot of Mr. Yanukovych’s Party of Regions. Having a net worth of $1 billion, according to Forbes, Mr. Novinsky regularly refuses to condemn Russian President Vladimir Putin or blame his native country for stoking war in Ukraine. He often blames Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko for not ending the four-year conflict that has killed more than 10,200 people and displaced nearly 2 million more.
“Earlier we [UOC-MP] considered this as the anti-terrorist operation [as the conflict was legislatively known]… It has currently taken on another form,” Archbishop Klyment said. “The Ukrainian Orthodox Church supports Ukrainian fighters who protect the borders of Ukraine in the east.”
The archbishop emphasized that if the “Ukrainian state says this is aggression, then we support these actions,” however, he did not mention Russia.
Members of the Moscow Patriarchate Church are now being investigated for anti-Ukrainian activities, two SBU colonels said during a March 28 roundtable in the Donetsk Oblast city of Pokrovsk (formerly Krasnoarmiysk) titled: “Russian Federation Aggression against Ukraine: Historical Parallels and Modern Dimension.”
The information news agency Vchasno reported that members of the UOC-MP “voluntarily are becoming servants of the Kremlin’s regime,” and that the Church’s property has or is providing shelter to “separatist” elements, including storage for arms.
The ongoing SBU investigation is nationwide, but doesn’t involve the UOC-MP in name or as an entity.
“It has been established that Russian special services are exerting a complex [and] systematic negative informational influence on the citizens of Ukraine through diverse channels – social networks and generally accessible sources on the Internet, traditional mass media, print and book production, as well as via direct discussions, seminars, conferences, etc.,” the SBU said in a response to The Ukrainian Weekly. “Among the significant number of channels used to disseminate destructive information… is the use of clerical circles and individual priests.”
“Churches of the UOC-MP are, in fact, centers from which [Russian-led forces] launched their activities against Ukraine,” said SBU Col. Valeriy Udovychenko at the Donetsk Oblast roundtable, as cited by Vchasno.
Mark Raczkiewycz
The 11th century Dormition Cathedral on the grounds of the Kyiv Monastery of the Caves.
Investigations are under way, the SBU said, of individual priests who serve the Ukrainian branch of the Russian Orthodox Church, who “conduct activities that threaten the national security of Ukraine.” This includes probes into Crimea-based priests who promoted Russia’s annexation of the Ukrainian territory in March 2014, as well as the “collection of money for assisting certain units of the armed forces of the Russian Federation.”
Moscow’s Ukrainian Archbishop Klyment stated that the Church “doesn’t provide comment on accusations from people who don’t represent state bodies or agencies,” when asked to respond by The Ukrainian Weekly. “We comment only on what speakers or officials of law enforcement bodies and authorities say, including the SBU and its head, Vasyl Hrytsak, who has more than once said he has no accusations against the Ukrainian Orthodox Church [Moscow Patriarchate].”
When asked whether the UOC-MP has ever provided logistical support or shelter to separatists or Russian-led forces, Archbishop Klyment said: “Not once.”
He continued: “The SBU never proved this, including in Sviatohirsk – [the monastery near Sloviansk] – and more than once the SBU confirmed that this is slander and libelous.”
For more than at least a decade the UOC-MP has promoted the Kremlin’s vision of “Russkii Mir,” a doctrine that seeks to promote Russian culture and that denigrates all things Ukrainian, including Kyiv’s claim to a separate ethnicity, language and culture, according to Oleksandr Sagan, who headed the Ukrainian government’s Committee on Religion and Nationalities that registers Churches within the Ministry of Culture.
The professor of religious studies told The Ukrainian Weekly that the Ukrainian branch of the Moscow-based Church is an “instrument of Russia’s politics” towards Ukraine, one that “says the Ukrainian people are artificial, and it promotes this ideology” on a regular basis.
Sixty-eight percent of Ukrainians who say they believe in God identify with the Orthodox Christian faith, according to a Razumkov Center nationwide poll conducted in March 2017 that didn’t include respondents in Russia-occupied Crimea or the Donbas.
Among them, 17 percent identify with the Moscow Patriarchate, less than half of the number who identify with the Kyiv Patriarchate – the first time that the margin had exceeded a multiple of two.
Archbishop Yevstratiy (Ivan Zoria), spokesperson for the Ukrainian Orthodox Church – Kyiv Patriarchate (UOC-KP), told The Ukrainian Weekly that although there had always been more Kyiv Patriarchate parishioners, the reason there are twice as many in comparison to Moscow Patriarchate faithful is because of the rival Church’s “pro-Russian position” over the past four years – a reference to the duration of the Moscow-instigated Donbas war.
“When people hear priests of the Moscow Patriarchate refuse to provide funeral services for slain pro-Ukrainian Donbas war soldiers and justify their refusal by saying they had killed their Slavic brothers, and tell parishioners that we should pray for ‘our country’ while not specifying whose country, of course people look at it differently,” he explained.
Archbishop Yevstratiy added that liturgies at UOC-MP churches often deliver veiled messages whereby people are told not to take up arms “against their brothers” if being enlisted into the army. (The latest army call-up began on April 2.)
“Their pro-Russian position publicly is cloaked, but internally it’s clearly understood where their [UOC-MP] sympathy lies… they are strongly tied to the Moscow Orthodox Church that has deep ties with the Russian government, which it historically has since tsarist times,” he noted.
The Kyiv Patriarchate archbishop emphasized that any Church, including the UOC-MP, should have the right to express its views however it wants, “but within strict accordance with Ukrainian law – we do not condone forcible actions against them or their churches, everyone is equal before the law.”
Asked why law enforcement authorities haven’t taken action against alleged unlawful activities by the UOC-MP, Archbishop Yevstratiy said there is a fear that any move might “exacerbate” already existing tensions in society.
However, if the government keeps ignoring the alleged “covert” illegal activities by the UOC-MP, “then this could encourage its proponents to start acting more in the open instead of waiting for ‘Russian liberators’ and would encourage radicals to support pro-Russian activities” in society, he added.
For his part, Archbishop Klyment of the UOC-MP rejected claims by nationalist groups that the premises his church operates in Ukraine is Russian “occupied territory.”
“I would like to remind people that these places of worship were built by Ukrainian citizens, they are visited by Ukrainian citizens, and those who try to take them over act in aggression against the Ukrainian people,” Archbishop Klyment said.
Most recently, far-right group C14 picketed the Pecherska Lavra in January after the UOC-MP refused to perform burial services for a 1-year-old child in Zaporizhia because the family belonged to the Kyiv Patriarchate. Members of the group blocked entrances to the Lavra and held signs that suggested Russia’s FSB security service was “occupying” the compound.
The UOC-MP has almost exclusive lease rights to perform spiritual services in the Lavra and the church’s Kyiv Metropolitan’s residence is located on the premises. However, the UOC-KP also leases space in the Lavra compound.
Asked if the armed conflict in the Donbas is a civil war, the Moscow Patriarchate’s Archbishop Klyment said that this is a “philosophical term.”
He added: “In the east, people fight not only international forces, but also Ukrainian citizens… additionally, once military action started in the Donbas, citizens and law enforcement bodies ended up on both sides of the line of separation.”