Manipulation about the church clash in Ukraine

A Facebook post shares a clip, claiming it shows how Ukraine, led by Zelensky, violates religious freedoms and beats priests. However, no priests are beaten in the clip, it is actually a fight between two religious communities over the control of a temple. One of them may be banned, due to well-founded suspicions it supports the Russian aggressor

 

In a Facebook post, an attached clip is described with the following words:

In Ukraine, opposition parties are banned, opposition media outlets are prohibited, people are forcibly conscripted into the army, and there is no religious freedom either.

Zelensky’s Ukraine. Occupation of the Orthodox church, Priests are beaten in Cherkasy.

Similar posts can be found on other social networks (example here), so this review could also apply to them.

The clip does not show how Ukraine, led by Volodymyr Zelensky, violates religious freedoms and beats priests, it shows a fight between two religious communities over the control of a temple. One of them may be banned, due to well-founded suspicions it supports the Russian aggressor, so the Ukrainian government gave it a deadline to break with Moscow.

It is the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC), which was long autonomous under the Moscow Patriarchate, therefore known as UOCMP (Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate) and was under strong Russian influence. There are still some UOC priests there, although it distanced itself from Moscow and condemned it.

One of them is Metropolitan Feodosiy (secular name: Denys Snigur), accused of defending the Russian aggression and spreading religious intolerance. However, the Ukrainian government only sentenced him to house arrest and only at night, and so during the day he continued to give inciting sermons. He was the one who caused the incident in the clip, and the story about that is as follows.

Several temples in Ukraine shifted from the UOC to the OCU (Orthodox Church of Ukraine), which is for the full church independence from Moscow, so on the 12^th of June, 2024, a parochial meeting was held, on which was voted that the St. Michael’s Cathedral in Cherkasy should do the same (this is where the clip was recorded). Feodosiy and his supporters did not recognize this meeting and ignored the demands of the authorities to hand over the temple to the OCU.

Feodosiy found out that the night between the 16^th and the 17^th of October, 2024, supporters of the OCU would take over the temple, making use of the fact that it will be empty due to the curfew, which is in force because of the war. For that reason, Feodosiy called to worship that night and barricaded himself in the temple with his supporters. The supporters of the OCU came around 3 o’clock and broke thorugh the barricades, entering the temple. Because of the curfew, Feodosiy could not call for reinforcement, instead it came in the morning and chased away the OCU supporters.

Feodosiy’s supporters once again barricaded themselves, but now also mobilized against the opposing side, which around 11 o’clock finally broke its resistance. An hour later, the first prayer in the Ukrainian language in the history of that temple was held.

It should be pointed out that up until 1686, Ukraine had a church life independent from Moscow. That independence was lost after in 1654, the state of the Ukrainian Cossacks, the Hetmanate, made a harmful alliance with Moscow, which it used to enslave Ukraine. It should also be known that when Kyiv was baptized in 988, Moscow did not exist, but it aggressively wants to impose its ecclesiastical authority on Ukraine.

The post hushes this up, falsely portraying the pro-Russian priests in Ukraine as victims. In the video, not only do we see that their followers are not innocent victims, but also how they fight, and there are other videos of that. Both sides have their own version of the event and blame each other for the use of pepper spray, teargas and other weapons.

The clip shows how one OCU supporter threatens with a gun (it is not clear whether it is real), shouting: “Stay back, stay back!”, while some spread disinformation that he shot in the direction of the ones barricaded. The police are investigating and they have said it is not one of their own. There were hot heads from both sides, there were no deaths, but there were injuries. However, no serious cases.

This is not repression by the government and there was some type of procedure and voting. The government could have used force, which would have been legally justified by the imposition of martial law, which implies the limitation of some rights. It does not contradict democracy, since it is an abnormal situation, which requires special measures, especially against those considered to be the “fifth column.”

However, it should be known that religious conflicts are not always on a national basis. Someone may be a worshipper of the UOC not because they love Russia, but because they consider the UOC to be the only correct church according to Orthodox dogmas and canons, which is a more complex topic (for theologians, etc.).

Moreover, Cherkasy is in central Ukraine and there are no strong pro-Russian feelings there (it is not Donetsk or Luhansk) and the question is whether such feelings have survived anywhere in the country because of the aggression.

Ironically, the post does not ask for the aggression to stop, but for Ukraine not to mobilize for defense. However, that is a necessary evil for any invaded state, where unfortunately, coercion is also used. In a country that is in military chaos like Ukraine, mistakes are made in that regard, however, it is absurd to demand that everything is “all sunshine and rainbows” (in slang terms).

On top of that, Russian propaganda also plants staged clips from the “mobilization in Ukraine”, or ones that are falsely described, a topic on which we have already written (here, here, here and here).

Also, Ukraine did not ban the opposition parties (for example European Solidarity, Batkivshchyna, and Golos function normally), only those who are considered to be the “fifth column,” like Viktor Medvedchuk’s Opposition Platform—For Life, who is now in Russia with Vladimir Putin, the godfather of his daughter.

The post spreads falsehoods and tendentiously hushes up facts, however, the clip itself is not fake and it is not a montage, therefore we assess the post as partially untrue.

 

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