Expert: Ukrainian authorities assist OCU under State Department’s directive
Konstantin Bondarenko commented on the selective approach of the authorities, who allowed the OCU to hold a worship at St. Sophia of Kyiv Cathedral but denied the UOC.
The authorities are assisting the OCU under a directive issued by the US State Department, where this structure was conceived. This point of view was voiced by the Ukrainian political analyst, Candidate of Historical Sciences Konstantin Bondarenko, in the commentary to the UOJ.
“OCU is a classic administrative pocket political church, the one which from time to time some states create for their own specific political goals,” the expert noted. “In this situation, the OCU is more of a political structure than an ecclesiastical one, which, among other things, was not even initiated by Ukraine, but was designed by the US State Department and created under pressure on Patriarch Bartholomew from Sam Brownback. It is clear that the OCU continues to enjoy such special patronage."
According to the politologist, it was precisely on the basis of these political goals that the directive was issued to the Ukrainian authorities whereby, conventionally speaking, whatever the hierarchs of the OCU would request them should be fulfilled.
“So in this situation, I think, it was political moments, political games that became dominant in the decision to allow the OCU to worship in St. Sophia Carhedral of Kyiv,” concluded Konstantin Bondarenko.
Recall that on December 15, 2020, the OCU held a "thanksgiving prayer" at the St. Sophia Cathedral of the capital on the occasion of the two-year anniversary of its foundation. Earlier, the Ministry of Culture, under the pretext of the coronavirus epidemic, refused the UOC to hold a service on the territory of the Sophia Kyivska National Reserve.
