By: Syrializm Analytics
US “peacekeeping” activity in Ukraine splits society, already using tried and tested methods, tearing apart an already bleeding country
For many years now, the United States, under the banner of the struggle for democracy in the post-Soviet countries, has mobilized its European partners under the star-striped banners.
Fear of a common enemy in the face of gaining Russia has again become a powerful unifying factor.
The European Union as a whole, as well as individual leaders of the countries of the Old World, simply don’t have enough time and energy to think about the well-being of their own peoples – we must fight the “wild and aggressive Russian bear”.
One of the most successful projects allowing the United States to retain Europe in vassal subordination for several years is the “occupation of Crimea by Russian troops” and the war in the Donbass.
Non-biased experts, including ours, European ones, have long questioned the very fact of Russia’s annexation of the Crimean Peninsula, whose inhabitants, as it turned out, are far from willing to return to the jurisdiction of Ukraine, and the fighting in the Donbass, which, according to American politicians, is provoked from the territory of Russia, is being carried out at the expense of American taxpayers, almost officially allocated by the US State Department.
Against this background, even an ordinary European citizen raises the question of the legality and expediency of the increasing anti-Russian (or pro-American?) Sanctions, which, first of all, hit him in his own pocket and in the economy of his country…
Another surge in inter-Ukrainian confrontation, but already on the basis of traditional religious differences, was provoked by the very same United States.
After an informal meeting with the fully official representative of the US State Department in Sinop last April, Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople once again attended to the fate of the flock of the Kiev Metropolis of the Russian Orthodox Church.
Frankly speaking, plans to expand his patrimony at the expense of Bartholomew’s neighbors ripened long ago that he was repeatedly blamed by the hierarchs of the church.
Over the past 300 years, Constantinople has lost its power, ceased to be the center and pillar of Orthodoxy, and the remaining parishes in the subordination could hardly serve as a worthy justification for the title of Ecumenical Patriarch.
But, if at first the activity of the bishop who settled in Istanbul was limited to unpromising anti-Russian projects, then after a landmark meeting in Sinop, Bartholomew was clearly emboldened.
Already in September, Bartholomew announced the appointment of Archbishop Daniel of Pamphylia from the USA and Bishop of Edmonton Hilarion from Canada as “exarchs of the Patriarchate of Constantinople in Kiev”.
Naturally, there was no question of any coordination of these anti-canonical actions with the head of the Russian Orthodox Church Cyril and the metropolitan of Kiev and all Ukraine Onufriy.
It is worth clarifying that the governance system of the Orthodox Church is significantly different from Catholicism.
Today, there are fifteen Orthodox patriarchates, the head of each of which has all the powers, but only on its canonical territory, and has no right to somehow influence the surrounding.
The moment for the introduction of foreign territory was more than chosen successfully.
In Ukraine, there was already a showdown between the traditional Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate and the non-canonical Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church and the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kiev Patriarchate, headed by the schismatic Filaret, excommunicated and anathema.
As a subtle politician, Bartholomew warmed the disgraced Filaret and, promising to cancel his excommunication, insistently recommended to assist in the creation of a new united church structure.
The decision to restore the ranks of the leaders of the Ukrainian schism and return them to church fellowship was made by the Synod of the Church of Constantinople on October 11, and on December 13, Patriarch Filaret awarded the former CIA Deputy Director for Special Operations Jack Devine with the Order of St. Andrew the First-Called – “for support from the US authorities in ensuring the independence of Ukraine”.
However, with the award of the American intelligence officer Filaret was clearly in a hurry.
As it turned out after receiving the united Orthodox Church of Ukraine autocephaly, the conditions of the long-awaited tomos didn’t meet the hopes and aspirations of the schismatic.
The Ukrainian church was deprived of independence, becoming, in fact, the local branch of the Patriarchate of Constantinople, and Filaret himself, having been awarded the rank of Honorary Patriarch of the PCU, remained virtually out of work – the church was headed by his own protégé Metropolitan Epiphanies.
Realizing that his overseas friends had tritely deceived him, using them in vain in his political games, Filaret called on supporters for a new split.
Orthodox laity, already tired of the confrontation of their spiritual shepherds, began to leave the bosom of the traditional church in masse.
The ideologists of the once-generated in the United States sect of Jehovah’s Witnesses did not fail to take advantage of the situation. In recent years, the number of Kingdom Hall parishioners in Ukraine has grown by almost a quarter.
This period was another milestone in the history of the confrontation of Christians of Ukraine.
Against the backdrop of White House loud statements about the need for national reconciliation in Ukraine, these actions of Washington look, at least, strange.
Although the strangeness in US policy, even in relation to its strategic partners, has always been enough. In this regard, the recent telephone conversation between Donald Trump and the Ukrainian president, the decryption of which the head of the White House was forced to make public under the threat of impeachment, is very revealing.
Paternally instructing Vladimir Zelensky, Trump strongly recommended that his Ukrainian counterpart establish relations with the Kremlin and… demand more attention to European problems from European leaders.
“For example, Germany does very little for Ukraine.
All they do is chatter, and you should tell them about it“, Trump said in a private conversation.
His interlocutor very willingly supported the “patron”:
“You’re absolutely right.
I spoke with President Macron, and said that Europeans aren’t doing enough in the area of sanctions against Russia, they are not helping Ukraine as they should.
It turns out, despite the fact that the European Union should be our closest partner, in fact, the United States is much closer to us”, Zelensky emphasized.
Let me remind you that, as the official representative of Brussels recently specified, over the past 5 years Ukraine has received from the EU countries more than 15 billion euros – in the form of grants and loans to support democratic transformations.
The United States spent much less on Ukraine, and even then, in the form of “military assistance”, in other words, helping Ukrainians on both sides kill each other…
