Orthodox Reflections

The persecution of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) is getting worse. The canonical church under Metropolitan Onuphry has seen the violent seizure and destruction of more parishes by forces actively led by Orthodox Church in Ukraine (OCU) priests. This video is an overview of the terrible events happening in Ukraine to the canonical Church.

In addition to what is seen in the video, two churches in the Kiev Province and Holy Transfiguration Church in the village of Ivankov were violently seized by schismatics on Saturday, May 13. Doors were knocked down, priests and parishioners were assaulted.

In the holy sites which the Ukrainian Government and its supporters seize, blasphemous and mocking rituals are performed. Below you can see a man dressed in the costume of priestly garb conducting a mock funeral for Orthodox bishops:

https://twitter.com/alopeki/status/1659137405390139394

Unjust arrests of hierarchs and clergy continue. Metropolitan Theodosy (Snigiryov) of Cherkassy and Kanev was recently put under house arrest by the Ukrainian Secret Services on the vague charges of “praising Moscow priests who aid the aggressor”.  Speaking from his detention, His Eminence had this to say to his people:

I am thinking about the present times, when our Church is undergoing trials, a period of persecution, when terrible things are happening around the Kiev Caves Lavra, when churches are being set afire, when churches are being destroyed, when churches and cathedrals are being seized and given over to people who have nothing to do with them, who did not build them, after which there is no one to pray in them. When our Church finds itself in such a circumstances in society, in conditions of persecution, we—Church hierarchs, priests, and laity—are not only able but are under obligation to raise our voices in defense of the Church.

 

Only very recently bill No. 9223 was introduced in the Supreme Parliament, which will most likely put an end to all freedom of speech in our country. And after it’s passed, we will no longer be able say what we can still say now. And the fact that the Church will not be able at all to witness the truth, which will not correspond to the Procrustean bed of those ideas and principles that are now being inculcated into our society, is a great tragedy for the Church. Therefore, we need to hurry and say today what we will then simply no longer be able to say.

In another blatant violation of religious freedom, in a nation whose Constitution supposedly protects it, a metropolitan and priest were found guilty of “inciting religious enmity”:

In another glaring example of the Ukrainian state’s psuedo-judicial justification for outright persecution against the largest religious confession in the country, a hierarch of the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church and the secretary of his former diocese were given a suspended prison sentence yesterday. Their “crime”: reading and sharing information on Orthodox canonical norms and violations. According to the court in a country whose constution guarantees religious freedom, defending the ancient canons of the Orthodox Church is “inciting religious enmity.”

 

His Eminence Metropolitan Joasaph, previously the ruling hierarch of the Kirovograd Diocese of the UOC, and Fr. Roman Kondratyuk were both sentenced to three years imprisonment with a probationary period of two years. They were also banned from holding senior positions in any religious organizations for a year.

The United States and NATO constantly cast the War in Ukraine as a battle for Ukrainian Democracy and freedom versus Russian authoritarianism. However, Ukrainian Christian bishops are arrested on flimsy charges, and at least one is warning that all protesting voices could soon be silenced. How can anyone reconcile such flagrant violations of human rights with “freedom” and “Democracy” as understood by the average citizen of a NATO country? An average citizen who is forced, at gunpoint, to cough up the taxes necessary to pay for these injustices?

The end goal of the Ukrainian Government is to declare the UOC a “foreign” Church so that she can be completely banned. Key to this strategy is renaming the UOC to include the word “Russian”. This is the subject of a pending court case:

Although it has been legally registered as the “Ukrainian Orthodox Church” for 30 years, there have been attempts at least since 2018 under President Poroshenko to forcibly rename the UOC as the “Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine,” although these attempts have been repeatedly blocked by Ukrainian courts.

 

Ukrainian authorities hope to forcibly rename the UOC as the “Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine” in order to then ban the Church on the national level. In January, a state “expert group” declared that, despite the decisions of the UOC Council’s in May 2022, it remains part of the Moscow Patriarchate. This finding was based on documents of the Moscow Patriarchat itself, which has stated that it is not possible to grant autocephaly to a daughter Church without a resolution to that effect at a Synod meeting. For obvious reasons, due to the current political situation in Ukraine, it is not possible for UOC representatives to attend a Synod meeting of the Moscow Patriarchate.

Western propaganda has been so effective since 2018, that most Westerners simply do not realize that the UOC does not use the terms “Moscow Patriarchate” or “Russian” in her name. That would be inappropriate, as the UOC is a self-governing Ukrainian Church led by Ukrainians for Ukrainians. It is the actual, canonical Orthodox Church in the nation of Ukraine.

If the Ukrainian Government is successful in actually “banning” the UOC at the national level, it is not hard to imagine what happens next. Various local governments throughout Ukraine have already enacted local “bans”, which immediately led to increased persecution of faithful Ukrainians and their clergy in those areas. On a national scale, the results will be truly horrific.

The UOC is the Church of the Martyrs in our midst.  She suffers for Christ and, according to her leader Metropolitan Onuphry, is privileged to do so.

We provided many more examples of this horrible, on-going persecution in this article.

The UN and multiple other world bodies have noted this persecution with the utmost concern and condemned it. So has almost the entire Orthodox World. Patriarch Ilia of Georgia, His Grace Bishop Siluan of Australia, Patriarch of Antioch and All the East John X, His Grace Bishop Michael of Constantia of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, Archbishop Theodosius of Sebastia of the Patriarchate of Jerusalem, Patriarchate of Bulgaria, Patriarchate of Georgia, and Patriarchate of Serbia have all issued messages of support for the UOC and condemnation of these unholy acts. Additional messages of support have come from Metropolitan Isaak of Germany and Central Europe of the Antiochian Orthodox Patriarchate, Metropolitan Jonah of ROCOR, Archbishop Anastasios of Albania, Metropolitan Tikhon of America, Metropolitan Nicholas of ROCOR, Metropolitan Gabriel of Lovchansk (Bulgaria), and Bishop Gerasim Popovich (Serbia). Of special note was the warm message from Metropolitan Neophytos of Morphou (Cyprus), who belongs to one of the few synods in the world that has official ties to OCU. This is a position His Eminence absolutely rejects. This is only a partial list of those who have spoken out. Too many have issued statements to list them all.

If you would like to express your support of the UOC, please go here to sign a petition of support in English which we are continuously distributing. ROCOR is accepting donations to help the monks in the Kiev Petschersk Lavra, who are being starved out by the Ukrainian Government. Click here to read more and find the Donate link. To sign an Italian petition to save the Kiev Theological Academy and which is targeted at the European Union, please click here.

Within Orthodoxy, there are supporters of both the Zeleskyy Regime’s actions and of continuing to fund the War in Ukraine. We talked in this article about how such Orthodox Christians, usually associated with Constantinople (Greek Archdiocese) or Alexandria, publicly cope with being in favor of the persecution of the Body of Christ. In this article, however, we want to zero in on what is probably one of the most widespread methods of pro-persecution redirection – the Orthodox Patriarchs and hierarchs supporting the UOC are lacking in the courage and integrity necessary to condemn Russia, so their defense of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church is somehow invalid. They are afraid of Big Bad Russia, or they are deluded, or they are corrupt, or they are hypocrites, or all of the above.

Fr. Bohdan Hladio, a Ukrainian Orthodox priest within the jurisdiction of the Ecumenical Patriarchate and a PhD student at the Toronto School of Theology, makes the case this way:

I would invite those who of late have become deeply concerned with the state of religious liberty in Ukraine to first study the state of religious liberty in Russia and the temporarily occupied territories. While the Onuphryite Church in Ukraine is not being banned, the existence of Ukrainian Orthodox (and other) Churches and cultural institutions in Russia is forbidden, along with many other religious, cultural, and human rights groups. The question I would propose to those who are so concerned about the state of civil rights in Ukraine is “What have you done to support human rights in Russia?”

 

Likewise, I cannot help but wonder why it is that most if not all of the patriarchates and hierarchs who support the Onuphryite monks in Kyiv have not been able to find the honesty and courage to openly and categorically condemn Russia’s unprovoked war and particularly the Patriarch of Moscow’s clearly anti-Christian support of it?

So many bad assumptions in such a short quote. The first is that any assault on religious liberty in Russia could be equivalent to what is happening in Ukraine. The Russian Government is not closing Orthodox Churches, arresting Orthodox hierarchs, burning churches, gassing people trying to attend liturgy, abusing icons, seizing monasteries, etc. The second is that the UOC is some kind of personality cult of the Metropolitan, rather than the actual canonical Orthodox Church in Ukraine. This is as stupid as it is insulting. Prior to the US exerting its influence over Constantinople in 2018, even the Phanar recognized Metropolitan Onuphry and his Church as canonical, not some kind of cult. The third assumption, which we will be most concerned with here, is that Orthodox hierarchs should be publicly condemning Russia’s actions in the War, and since most of them are not, there must be a nefarious reason why not.

Before we proceed, let us pause to note that the UOC and Metropolitan Onuphry have condemned the Russian invasion, which is exactly what you would expect the national church of Ukraine to do. Other hierarchs around the world are not in the same position as Metropolitan Onuphry, so let’s look at the world from their perspective.

1. War is the Province of Politicians and Generals

The US loves to deal in absolutes. You either wear the Black Hat or the White Hat. You are either the hero, or the villain. There is no room in such a mindset for complexity. That is by design. Such blatant propaganda is necessary to gin up support for American wars requiring the mass murder of innocent people at great distances in countries the average American cannot find on a map. In reality, the underlying causes of wars are often multi-faceted and quite complicated. The rest of the world tends to understand this complexity better than Americans.  The Church, having lived through innumerable wars across two millennia, understands complexity quite well. In war, the Church often finds herself in the middle between both sides. This is especially true in Ukraine, as the majority of both the Russian and Ukrainian Armies are Orthodox Christians.

The Church recognizes that one side in a war could have a more just cause than the other. Or, both sides could be entirely in the wrong. There is not always a hero. Sometimes, everyone is wearing a Black Hat. War is a symptom of the Fall of Man and is always lamentable. In the course of the fullness of history, God alone will judge the rightness or wrongness of the actions of the combatants in any war. Until then, what is always most important to the Church is to restore peace as quickly as possible to stop the suffering of the innocent.

War is complicated, and is a tragic evil outside the normal purview of the Church. On the other hand, the persecution of the UOC is not complicated at all and is the Church’s business.  There is never a legitimate reason to be silent over the persecution of Christians and assaults on holy things.

Archpriest Geoffrey Korz from Canada expressed this clearly:

The land war in Eastern Europe is the business of politicians and generals: it is a battle that is not the primary responsibility of the Church, for which we must minister to all involved. The spiritual war against the canonical Orthodox Church – the attacks on priests and faithful, the ransacking of holy monasteries, the introduction of laws banning our Orthodox Christian faith – these are the business of the Church and its shepherds. The shepherds must see to this business, and not be cowed into further silence.

The War in Ukraine is way more complicated than the “Russia bad” caricature presented in the Western media. It is not surprising  that many hierarchs prefer not to enter into contentious debates over the war, and instead prefer to focus on restoring peace. By contrast, persecution of fellow Orthodox Christians is extremely straightforward and is inherently the business of the Church’s shepherds. War is complicated, but persecution is not. “Progressive” Orthodox pretend the reverse is true – responsibility for the war is clear cut but whether or not to condemn grandmothers getting assaulted in Church is complex.

2. The War Was Not Unprovoked

The Russian Invasion of Ukraine is constantly referred to as “unprovoked”. It is a talking point repeated by everyone from journalists to government officials to the Patriarch of Constantinople. But is it true? Is Ukraine the innocent victim of unprovoked Russian aggression?

Not hardly. The US and NATO are responsible for this war. One of the primary events leading to this war was the 2014 coup, which the West supported and enabled to succeed. The excerpt below is from an eyewitness account of the events surrounding the so-called “Maidan”:

In December 2013, US Senator John McCain and Deputy Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Viktoria Nuland came to Kiev to meet with the revolution and coup d’état plotters – the CIA, US Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt, opposition politicians, and ultranationalists – and to stand on the Maidan stage with neo-Nazis making anti-Putin threats, and to walk through the crowd passing out bread and cookies to the protestors. After the rally, McCain said this of the revolutionaries: “Those brave men and women should know that they are not alone. Their friends across the world stand in solidarity with them.”

 

During this time, ultranationalists and opposition politicians routinely met with Ambassador Pyatt at the US Embassy to coordinate their actions. Neo-Nazis also terrified the population by holding torchlight marches in support of the unfolding revolution.

The US funded and supported far-right Ukrainian nationalists in overthrowing the democratically elected government of Ukraine. Prior to this war, everyone knew Ukraine was full of unsavory, Nazi extremists. Most of the world, including Orthodox hierarchs outside of the West, still knows it.

In April 2014, the ruling Ukrainian junta launched a military campaign against the largely Russian-speaking Donbas region over their rejection of the coup. Among other reasons, the Russian speakers there were angry that the Russian language and Russian culture had been brutally mocked and oppressed by the Western-supported radicals in Kiev. Over the next eight years of war, thousands died and hundreds of thousands became refugees.

Despite two agreements, Minsk I & II, the war never ended. Zelenskyy was elected on a peace platform. Still the war did not end. We now know that the Western powers were never negotiating in good faith and never intended for Ukraine to keep to any agreement. The West was only buying time to arm Ukraine sufficiently for its army to fully destroy the Donbas republics, founded in 2014 by Russian-speaking Ukrainians as a measure to protect themselves.

Jacques Baud is a former colonel of the General Staff, ex-member of the Swiss strategic intelligence, and a specialist on Eastern countries. He described the run up to the current war between Russia and Ukraine in this article:

On 17 February, President Joe Biden announced that Russia would attack Ukraine in the next few days. How did he know this? It is a mystery. But since the 16th, the artillery shelling of the population of Donbass had increased dramatically, as the daily reports of the OSCE observers show. Naturally, neither the media, nor the European Union, nor NATO, nor any Western government reacted or intervened. It would be said later that this was Russian disinformation. In fact, it seems that the European Union and some countries have deliberately kept silent about the massacre of the Donbass population, knowing that this would provoke a Russian intervention.

 

In fact, as early as February 16, Joe Biden knew that the Ukrainians had begun intense shelling the civilian population of Donbass, forcing Vladimir Putin to make a difficult choice: to help Donbass militarily and create an international problem, or to stand by and watch the Russian-speaking people of Donbass being crushed.

 

The Ukrainian artillery bombardment of the Donbass population continued, and, on 23 February, the two Republics asked for military assistance from Russia. On 24 February, Vladimir Putin invoked Article 51 of the United Nations Charter, which provides for mutual military assistance in the framework of a defensive alliance.

 

In order to make the Russian intervention seem totally illegal in the eyes of the public, Western powers deliberately hid the fact that the war actually started on February 16. The Ukrainian army was preparing to attack the Donbass as early as 2021, as some Russian and European intelligence services were well aware.

Baud also provided this explanation of the bigger picture causes of the war:

The dramatic developments we are witnessing today have causes that we knew about but refused to see:

• on the strategic level, the expansion of NATO (which we have not dealt with here);
• on the political level, the Western refusal to implement the Minsk Agreements;
• operationally, the continuous and repeated attacks on the civilian population of the Donbass over the past years and the dramatic increase in late February 2022.

In other words, we can naturally deplore and condemn the Russian attack. But WE (that is: the United States, France and the European Union in the lead) have created the conditions for a conflict to break out. We show compassion for the Ukrainian people and the two million refugees. That is fine. But if we had had a modicum of compassion for the same number of refugees from the Ukrainian populations of Donbass massacred by their own government and who sought refuge in Russia for eight years, none of this would probably have happened.

For more perspective on how the Ukraine War was provoked, we recommend reading an article from Code Pink, the US anti-war organization, which published all the times senior U.S. diplomats, journalists, academics and secretaries of defense spoke about the United State’s involvement in provoking Russia’s attack on Ukraine. Here is an example from that article, Ambassador Michael Gfoeller and David H. Rundell:

“Before the war, far right Ukrainian nationalist groups like the Azov Brigade were soundly condemned by the US Congress. Kiev’s determined campaign against the Russian language is analogous to the Canadian government trying to ban French in Quebec. Ukrainian shells have killed hundreds of civilians in the Donbas and there are emerging reports of Ukrainian war crimes. The truly moral course of action would be to end this war with negotiations rather than prolong the suffering the Ukrainian people in a conflict they are unlikely to win without risking American lives.”

Citizens of NATO member nations comprise the most heavily propagandized population on the planet. Many average Westerners do not know any of this history. The word “unprovoked” gets used so often in connection to the Russian invasion, with no counter narrative, that they simply accept its truth at face value. The Westerners who have heard this history frequently deny the truth of it. They claim the coup was a spontaneous uprising, that Russia provoked the war in the Donbas, that Russia kept the Minsk agreements from being honored, and that nothing out-of-the-ordinary was happening in February 2022. The fact that the increased shelling and troop movements leading up to the invasion were witnessed and reported by observers from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE as noted above) is dismissed as lies or as of no importance.

Many Orthodox hierarchs, however, are familiar with the true history leading up to this war. Especially for important Orthodox hierarchs from outside the West, this war may be awful (all are), it may be unjustified (God will judge), but it is definitely not unprovoked. Did we mention that wars are complicated? So most Orthodox hierarchs will focus on praying for peace and on condemning Christian persecution, which is always an unambiguous moral evil.

3. The World Has Experience With US Aggression

Americans always see themselves as the heroes. We stormed the beaches on D-Day to liberate Europe. We saved South Korea from the commies. Vietnam got messy, but we stopped Saddam from gobbling up Kuwait. We liberated Iraq, saved the Bosnians, and even tried to bring Afghanistan into the 21st Century at gunpoint. We are just too awesome. Heck, one SEAL Team could probably take on the entire Russian Army.

That self-image is why so many Americans can easily reject the previous information about how we actually provoked the War in Ukraine for our own policy objectives. The good guys just wouldn’t do that, would they?

The thing many Americans don’t understand: the parts of the world we have repeatedly bombed, invaded, and interfered with since WWII don’t see us as the good guys. 

One researcher has estimated that various types of U.S. military actions (including proxy wars) have victimized 37 nations and cost the lives of over 20 million people. The US has deployed troops to over 210 countries. This all occurred in the so-called “Post War” Era. Ironically named to be sure, since the US has been constantly at war the entire time.

So let’s talk about Syria, which is important to our discussion because the Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch is based there. Since the war started in 2011, the death toll is estimated at between 503,064 and 613,407. U.S.-led Coalition airstrikes have killed an estimated 12,865 people across Syria. Some 13.5 million Syrians have been identified as displaced persons (either still in Syria or having fled the country). This is out of a prewar population of some 22 million. The US still has 900 troops on the ground in Syria, supposedly to confront Islamic State militants and Iran. Interestingly, the troops are mostly in the primary oil producing region of the country. The Syrian Ministry of Petroleum and Mineral Resources has stated that over 80% of Syria’s daily oil production is stolen by “US forces and their supported armed groups”.

How did the war start in Syria? The Syrians, and many impartial observers, blame the wave of “Arab Spring” protests backed by the US that lead up to a US-backed “color revolution” attempt:

However, the chaotic situation in Syria today is not unrelated to the US’s malicious plans for a “color revolution” in Syria. In order to demonstrate its charm as a “beacon of human rights,” the US has even sent troops into action and launched several airstrikes on Syria without warning, causing a large number of civilian casualties and incalculable property damage in Syria…

Syria has been utterly destroyed and looted. In 78 days during the early 90’s, NATO dropped 14,000 bombs on Serbia, plus 10 to 15 tons of depleted Uranium. Bomb damage is still visible in Belgrade. When America does war, the consequences for the people on the ground are catastrophic.

Both the Patriarchs of Antioch and Serbia have experienced war with the United States first hand. They, and others we have bombed, rightly see Americans as hypocrites on Ukraine. We are mass murderers who love to screech about “genocide” when others commit a fraction of the violence we have. The Russians have not destroyed the major cities of Ukraine. The trains run on regular schedules. Foreign celebrities and politicians can freely travel into Kiev and pose with Zelenskyy. So can the President of the United States. Russia is trying to win while minimizing casualties and damage to infrastructure.

It is a strange kind of war, and anyone who has ever been bombed by America and NATO recognizes that fact. If Ukraine were fighting NATO, we would have utterly destroyed it already.

4. Sanctions as Warfare

Make America mad, there will be consequences. Even if Uncle Sam does not bomb you into the Stone Age, you are likely to face sanctions. Approximately 29% of producers of world GDP are currently under some form of US sanctions. That equates to over 1/4 of the world’s nations. Sanctions can be crushing to average people:

A new report from the Center for Economic and Policy Research finds that economic sanctions harm people in target countries, including by contributing to increases in mortality, poverty, and inequality, and to declines in per capita income and human rights. The report, “The Human Consequences of Economic Sanctions,” by economist Francisco Rodríguez, reviews 32 studies that assess the impact of economic sanctions on living standards. It shows that 30 of these analyses found significant declines in living standards in sanctions-targeted countries, including Afghanistan, Iran, and Venezuela — three case studies that demonstrate how sanctions contribute to widespread harm, including death.

The sanctions on Syria have reduced the population to such poverty that fruit is considered a luxury good. Following the devastating earthquake that recently hit the region, the benevolent US did agree to lift some sanctions for a temporary period of 180 days. Certainly the grateful Syrian children praise Joe Biden for his generosity. We didn’t give back any of their oil, though.

Even the non-sanctioned suffer. We can look at Europe to see the effect of cutting off its supply of natural resources from Russia. As always and everywhere, the poorer you are, the worse off you will be. Americans don’t seem to think much about the impact our global economic warfare has on so many hundreds of millions of people. Foreign Orthodox Christian hierarchs certainly do. Many of them suffer under sanctions regimes alongside their flocks.

It seems particularly hypocritical to constantly condemn Russia for fighting next door in Ukraine, when the US starves children all over the world for reasons no one really understands.

5. America Uses the Blood of Others

Ukraine is wrecked. Over 10 million Ukrainians have fled the country. The population is in freefall. The property damage and economic losses are in the billions. For the poorest country in Europe, the odds of it ever rebuilding on its own are zero. The estimate for war dead and wounded is over 800,000. Over 20% of its territory is lost, with more being taken each day. There is no economy left. Ukraine survives entirely off foreign aid. US tax dollars are even needed to pay government salaries. The original Ukrainian Army, and its equipment, was destroyed in the first year of the war. Zelenskyy keeps jetting around begging for replacement equipment, while his government struggles at home to get even the minimal number of recruits needed to keep the fight going.

Keep in mind, all this has occurred with Russia fighting in a remarkably restrained manner. Imagine what would happen if Russia fought the way America usually does with “shock and awe”.

Americans don’t see this picture. They get much more rosy assessments from our Government-Military-Media Complex. Outside the West, people know better. They know Ukraine has already lost too much to ever claim any kind of “victory”, and the only hope for Ukrainian survival is to end the war.

US policy makers, however, don’t care about Ukrainians. They are ready to fight to the last Ukrainian to achieve their real objective – hurting Russia. The Center for European Policy Analysis made this clear in an article called It’s Costing Peanuts for the US to Defeat Russia:

Altogether, the Biden administration received Congressional approval for $40bn in aid for Ukraine for 2022 and has requested an additional $37.7bn for 2023. More than half of this aid has been earmarked for defense.

 

These sums pale into insignificance when set against a total US defense budget of $715bn for 2022. The assistance represents 5.6% of total US defense spending. But Russia is a primary adversary of the US, a top tier rival not too far behind China, its number one strategic challenger. In cold, geopolitical terms, this war provides a prime opportunity for the US to erode and degrade Russia’s conventional defense capability, with no boots on the ground and little risk to US lives.

That is not some outlying opinion. This is really how the American governing elites think. A war that is completely destroying Ukraine is “worth it” because we can benefit from it. Would you ever expect loving, Christian hierarchs to support continuing this awful war? Sure, if they are US Deep State assets perhaps. Independent Orthodox Christian hierarchs who answer to God and not the CIA? Forget it. They know the score. The US is willing to trade other people’s blood for policy objectives.

Georgia went through the experience of being a US proxy, as their war was our first attempt at “degrading” Russia. Georgia got hammered flat. The Patriarch of Georgia has not forgotten that. Other “allies” of ours have also noticed America’s willingness to sacrifice their lives and economies for our objectives. Imagine how the Taiwanese felt after seeing news that, “A former national security advisor said the US would destroy Taiwan’s semiconductor factories if China seemed on the verge of controlling them after an invasion.”  Given that the US destroyed ally Germany’s Nordstream pipeline, they have to take such talk seriously.

Since when do the “good guys” wade through pools of their allies’ blood to achieve their own Machiavellian objectives? The only thing Orthodox Christians should care about right now is ending the War in Ukraine and the associated Christian persecution. That will require a cease fire and negotiations with no preconditions. After all the losses and the terrorism experienced at home, Russia will demand many concessions from Ukraine. That can’t be helped, and the alternative is to see Ukraine completely destroyed.

Those who wish to can publish books in the decades to come blaming Russia for everything. But for now, the only thing that matters is restoring peace.

6. US Never Goes Home Voluntarily

Decades after the end of WWII, the US still runs NATO and still has thousands of troops in Europe. The US never voluntarily goes home. If you lose to America, expect us to stay and rule your country indefinitely. When fighting proxy wars, the US has a habit of exacerbating and prolonging those conflicts. Peace is rarely in the interests of the US National Security State.

The world is sick of it. That is why peace is breaking out in the Middle East, as brokered by China. Saudis are now making nice with Iranians. An unheard of idea! The war in Yemen could be close to an end as a result. Syria has been welcomed back into the Arab League. The bloody civil and international war could soon be replaced by a new round of peaceful investment leading to rebuilding the shattered nation.

Perish the thought. We might have to give them back their oil! The US is having none of this “peace” business, especially in regards to Syria:

A bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers introduced a bill on Thursday intended to bar the American government from recognizing Bashar al-Assad as Syria’s president and to enhance Washington’s ability to impose sanctions – a warning to other countries normalizing relations with Assad.

Not only are we uninterested in peace with Syria, we want to stop other nations from making peace as well. As for Iran, the US is continuing to occupy Syria based partly on the excuse that our troops are needed in the area as a counter to it. Given our track record, why would anyone trust us to make peace or even have an interest in peace?

7. Pushing Woke on the World

The US Government claims the right to promote a “Woke” agenda of LGBTQ+, abortion, open borders, and Climate Change alarmism in every nation of the globe. That includes largely Christian, democratic nations such as Hungary. Conservatively governed, Hungary does not allow same-sex marriage or the presentation of LGBTQ propaganda to children. The Orban government also does not back America’s proxy war in Ukraine. So, of course, the Biden Administration dispatched USAID Administrator Samantha Powers to Hungary to bolster “democracy” in a democratic ally of the United States:

Administrator Power also held a lunch meeting with advocates for human rights and LGBTQI+ communities, where they discussed the experiences of LGBTQI+ people in Hungary and their efforts to increase understanding, support marginalized groups, and improve the lives of LGBTQI+ people in Hungary. The Administrator emphasized that the United States will continue to stand as an ally with LGBTQI+ people and all marginalized groups in their struggle for equality.

Her mere presence in the country set off alarm bells that a “color revolution” might be in the offing. Hungary is far from alone in suffering through US interference in its internal affairs. Nor is it the only country bothered by it. Japan is getting increasingly testy over pressure from the US Ambassador to pass an anti-LGBTQ discrimination bill:

Observers and conservative voices in Japan are increasingly uncomfortable with President Joe Biden’s ambassador to the country, Rahm Emanuel, inserting himself in domestic politics, particularly pressuring Japan’s legislature to pass a law against LGBT discrimination.

 

Emanuel, as a foreign diplomat, has cannonballed into this sensitive debate, pressuring the Diet to embrace Western notions of LGBT rights. The ambassador pressured the Diet in February to become a “clear, unambiguous voice not only for tolerance but against discrimination,” asserting he had “full confidence” in conservative Prime Minister Kishida Fumio to push through a bill of Emanuel’s liking. He has since made multiple public appearances, noting polls showing Japanese public support for same-sex marriage and advocating for domestic laws to reflect those polls.

The US interferes like this all over the world. One of the “progressive” Orthodox charges against Russia is that the War in Ukraine was undertaken to stop Pride parades and other liberalizations. No one with half a brain believes that. Russia has made its secular war aims abundantly clear (see above). Russia is not on an anti-LGBTQ military crusade. On the other hand, traditionally moral people all over the world understand perfectly well that for the West, led by the US,  the Woke agenda is deadly serious business. 

In fact, it almost seems as if the entire military apparatus of the West is nothing more than a Gay Militia.

https://twitter.com/NATOpress/status/1658796807353163776

Does anyone really expect Orthodox hierarchs, or even just ordinary Orthodox Christians, to focus condemnation on a conventional war, while the West is trying to violently destroy the very moral fabric of Christian society across the globe?

Nicholas – member of the Western Rite Vicariate, a part of the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese in America