Copyright © 2026 by Cassandra St. John, an Orthodox Christian
Volodymyr Zelensky, the erstwhile comedian and actor with a grating voice, is Ukraine’s dictator. He sports a sweatshirt and a Napoleonic Complex while globetrotting and begging money for the Russo-Ukrainian War.
My distaste for Zelensky does not mean that I prefer another autocrat or warlord. Ditch the binary thinking, friends.
I am an American Orthodox Christian, and my real beef is with the Americans of the Greek Archdiocese (GOARCH) planning to schmooze Zelensky at a dinner in New York on Sept. 26.
The hosts of the Zelensky dinner enjoy America’s manifold blessings, including religious freedom. Yet they plan to kiss up to a dictator who is persecuting a major branch of the one Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church. That is, the 1,000-year-old canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC), led by Metropolitan Onuphry of Kiev and All Ukraine.
The UOC’s lawyer, Robert Amsterdam, writes: “The dangerous threat to religious freedom in Ukraine has its origins in the state-sponsored 2019 recognition of a new Orthodox Church — the Orthodox Church in Ukraine (‘OCU’) — backed by the rogue support of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople.”
With the blessings of Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew and the U.S. government, Zelensky has seized approximately 1,500 UOC buildings and has handed them over to the state-run, nationalist OCU. The OCU’s schismatic clerics play-act in the stolen properties, or Zelensky repurposes them as shops or other trivialities.
Zelensky’s vicious efforts at repressing the UOC — including banning it during wartime — have the canonical Church heading underground.
Recently, Zelensky delivered up the equivalent of St. John the Baptist’s head on a platter, giving the OCU control of the labyrinthine Kiev Caves monastic complex and expelling the canonical monks. Revered 11th-century Athonite monks founded the monastery, one of Orthodoxy’s holiest sites.
The dinner invitation extols Zelensky’s statement at the war’s outset: “‘I need ammunition, not a ride.’”
Are you kidding me? Zelensky has taken an estimated $195 billion blood-soaked ride at my country’s expense.
Thus, Zelensky is persecuting these GOARCH bigwigs’ coreligionists, at the behest of the U.S. government and on their dime. Do these ironies escape them? What accounts for their glee at showboating with the pocket-sized dictator Zelensky?
Imagine how quickly a proposed American dinner honoring President Vladimir Putin of Russia would be canceled — and rightly so.
American Orthodox: The Zelensky dinner is an inflection point. Will you band together to oppose this abomination and to defend your brethren in the old country? Or will you remain in your jurisdictional ghettos at home? If and when the U.S. government decides to bring its war on Orthodoxy home, how do you expect to fare? Shouldn’t you assume that your government is noting your reactions now, including your indifference toward the besieged Slavs?
Will you quietly tolerate this Zelensky event?
Will you absorb this kick in the teeth?
This contemptuous, money-grubbing so-called “Orthodox” dinner honoring a secular hedonist.
This collaboration with Zelensky’s anti-Christian regime.
This desecration of your Slavic brethren being slaughtered in the Russo-Ukrainian War. The Zelensky event is a tap dance on their injuries, widows, orphans, and graves. Nearly four-and-a-half years in, the war now has lasted longer than either America’s or Russia’s fighting during World War II.
What exactly are we supposed to celebrate?
Should we honor Zelensky for ruling Ukraine under martial law since 2022 and overstaying his presidential term?
Or for employing Nazis in Ukraine’s military?
Or for abducting and impressing clergy?
Or for curb-stomping Metropolitan Longin of Bancheny?
Bancheny Monastery, where Metropolitan Longin takes care of the hundreds of orphans he has adopted, posted the above image in 2024, with the short message: “This is the price of the purity of the Orthodox faith!”
This bishop previously was a hero for adopting orphans, but now is labeled a criminal for rebuffing the nationalist OCU. The bishop says he does not want to join the OCU, because its adherents bust down doors and “beat up the old women who have prayed all their lives.”
The U.S. government supports the nationalist OCU as a means of sticking it to Russia. It perceives the canonical links between the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) and the UOC as suspect. The U.S. should remove its grubby hands from the situation.
The First Amendment’s Establishment Clause prohibits the U.S. government from establishing an official religion or favoring one religion over another — in the homeland, anyway, and for now, anyway. Shamefully, the U.S.’ gloves are off, against parts of the Orthodox Church abroad.
While U.S. cities choke on decrepitude, Zelensky and his well-heeled hosts plan to imbibe cocktails at a swanky restaurant in lower Manhattan. Fifteen hundred bucks will get you a seat. For only $250,000, you, too, can be the “Light of the World,” with priority seating and other perks. The event is a boatload of dough, with a side of martinis.
Meanwhile, the July 8 photo accompanying this column shows the result of a Ukrainian revolt against a press gang deployed to abduct civilians for military service. The crowd flipped and trashed the soldiers’ vehicle.
Credit: Office of the Prosecutor General & Euromaidan Press
Imagine being abducted by your government to fight the Russians, after your government has banned your native Church, even though your Church officially separated itself from the Russian Church in 2022 and denounced the Russian invasion. How would you react? The situation in Ukraine is “a dog’s breakfast,” as the Brits might say. That is putting it mildly.
Amsterdam has declared that banning an entire religion during wartime is “among the worst human rights crimes.”
That is because freedom of religion equals freedom of conscience. It is the seminal freedom, undergirding all other freedoms and ordering society.
American Orthodox Christians must protect religious freedom now — starting by opposing the Zelensky dinner.
My dear friends from Orthodox Reflections!
We have One Judge—our Savior, the Lord – our God Jesus Christ.
And His Kingdom will have no end! And Ukraine has become a land stained with the BLOOD of martyrs for the Orthodox faith.
Patriarch Bartholomew and Zelensky, as well as all your close associates! Earthly life passes quickly, and then comes the ordeals of the soul and God’s judgment! Aren’t you afraid? Prepare for God’s judgment!
Here is important information. Please distribute it widely.
With love in Christ
Your sister in Christ and your Ukrainian friend
Tetyana Avramenko
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https://spzh.eu/en/zashhita-very/96119-two-murders-one-silence
Faith Protection
Two murders, one silence
28 September 14:52
Zelensky condemned the killing of a Catholic priest in Poland the very same day. A month earlier, a UOC monk was murdered at the Sviatohirsk Lavra – and the president has remained silent ever since.
On September 24, 2026, in the Polish city of Jarosław, a citizen of Ukraine, a former soldier of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, attacked a convent of Benedictine sisters and killed a Catholic priest. That very evening, the crime was condemned by Volodymyr Zelensky.
Shortly afterward, the Ukrainian Embassy in Poland issued a statement of its own. Zelensky’s same-day condemnation and call for a thorough investigation were publicly reported.
And rightly so, one might think. When a citizen of your country commits such an atrocity abroad, the head of state should respond.
But there is another question.
A month earlier, on August 23, Monk Varsonofiy (Turianskyi) of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church was killed at the Sviatohirsk Lavra. He was killed on Ukrainian soil, behind Ukrainian army lines. Yet neither Zelensky, nor his Office, nor the Interior Ministry, nor the SBU has publicly responded to the killing to this day.
Why, then, does a Catholic priest murdered in Poland merit condolences from the Ukrainian president, while an Orthodox monk murdered in Ukraine does not?
Let us try to understand.
How Poland responded – and how Kyiv responded
First, let us recall what happened in Jarosław. At about 9:30 a.m., a 31-year-old Ukrainian entered the monastery grounds through open gates and began attacking people with a knife. Five people were injured, three of them Catholic priests. One of them later died in the hospital. The attacker was detained at the scene, and the mayor of Jarosław convened an emergency crisis team with the participation of the voivode the same day.
Contemporary reports confirm that one person was killed and four wounded in the attack. More details emerged later. The 31-year-old Ihor M. had previously served in the Armed Forces of Ukraine and fought at the front. He reportedly held Ukrainian and German passports, as well as a Polish PESEL number allowing him to obtain temporary protection status.
Poland’s top officials responded almost immediately. Prime Minister Donald Tusk wrote: “The Jarosław killer is in the hands of the Polish police. Investigative measures are underway. The perpetrator is a Ukrainian citizen. He will face the full severity of Polish law. I share the pain of the loved ones of the victims of this brutal attack.”
President Karol Nawrocki was even more forceful: “In the face of such acts, the state must be strong, act swiftly and relentlessly within the law… The task of the state is to ensure the safety of its citizens.”
One may have different views of Nawrocki’s tone, but his central point was clear: the state is responsible for people’s safety. When a priest is murdered in a monastery, it is a matter for the state, not merely for the police.
Zelensky responded to the killing in Poland that same day: “A horrific crime was committed at the Benedictine Sisters’ Abbey in Jarosław by a citizen of Ukraine. We are shocked by this evil… We extend our deepest condolences to the family and loved ones of the deceased.”
He continued: “The person responsible for this evil must be held fully accountable under the law. We expect a swift and thorough investigation into all the circumstances. It is painful that people are capable of such horrific crimes. Justice must prevail.”
The Ukrainian Embassy in Poland did not remain silent either: “We strongly condemn the brutal attack… We consider all manifestations of violence unacceptable. It is especially painful that such a tragedy occurred in a place that should be a sanctuary of prayer and mercy.” The diplomats stressed that “there can be no justification for violence or attacks against people.”
The following day, Ambassador Vasyl Bodnar was already telling journalists where the suspect was being held and what condition he was in. The Embassy’s public condemnation was also reported at the time.
It is not difficult to understand why Kyiv reacted so quickly. Poland is a key ally, relations are already complicated, and now the killer was a former Ukrainian serviceman – something Polish politicians were already highlighting. Silence would have carried too high a reputational cost for Ukraine.
The author’s contention is that the speed of the response reflected not only sympathy, but political calculation. UOC believers inside Ukraine, by contrast, have neither Poland’s Confederation party nor a Polish president capable of putting pressure on Bankova Street – and, in this view, there has consequently been no comparable response.
No one is criticizing Zelensky for what he said. Quite the opposite: those were the right words, spoken at the right time.
The question is why he could not find the same words for his own citizen – a UOC monk murdered at the Lavra.
The diplomats wrote that it was especially painful when tragedy struck “a place that should be a space of prayer and mercy.” They were speaking about a Polish monastery.
No Ukrainian official wrote anything comparable about the Sviatohirsk Lavra.
Sviatohirsk: a month of silence
At around 11 a.m. on August 23, a group of people attacked residents of the Sviatohirsk Lavra near St. Nicholas Church in the monastery’s upper grounds. Monk Varsonofiy (Turianskyi) died from a through-and-through gunshot wound to the head and neck. Monk Gregory was wounded, as was Andrii Kyriienko, who was living at the monastery.
The UOC reported the attack that same day, and the Lavra later said the forensic medical certificate identified a gunshot wound to the head and neck as the cause of Varsonofiy’s death. A criminal investigation remains underway.
Kyriienko spoke about the attack in the days that followed. According to his account, he was assaulted after responding “incorrectly” to the greeting “Glory to Ukraine!” with the words “Glory to God.” The article argues that the circumstances suggest Monk Varsonofiy paid with his life for similarly “incorrect” words.
Schema-Archimandrite Gabriel (Bunge) later put it this way: “That monk could easily have saved his life if he had obeyed his killers’ demand. But he did not. He answered as a Christian: glory belongs to God alone.”
Of course, the investigation into the Sviatohirsk killing formally continues. But already now we can say that the theory of a Russian sabotage and reconnaissance group appears untenable. We can judge this from a statement by Andrii Biletskyi, commander of the 3rd Army Corps – a man hardly likely to be suspected of sympathy toward the UOC: “There has never been a Russian soldier in Sviatohirsk… The city of Sviatohirsk lies within the defensive sector of the 60th Mechanized Brigade of the 3rd Army Corps. It is a rear area of our corps.”
In other words, the monk was killed behind Ukrainian army lines, in territory controlled by the Ukrainian state.
In Jarosław, the killer was a former Ukrainian serviceman. In Sviatohirsk, the article says, a monk was killed by people in military clothing behind Ukrainian lines. The president spoke about the former soldier who committed a crime abroad on the very same day. About the people in uniform who killed a monk at home – not a word.
Can that simply be coincidence?
Former Ukrainian MP Ihor Mosiychuk put his interpretation of the Sviatohirsk killing bluntly: “It sends a signal to the military that nobody cares – you can do whatever you want.”
Where did the hatred come from?
It is hard to believe that Zelensky simply failed to notice a tragedy in a small frontline city. More likely, the problem lies elsewhere. To honestly condemn the Sviatohirsk murder would mean having to say where the atmosphere came from in which a man in a cassock could be killed outside a church.
And that is something the authorities clearly do not want to do. Because that atmosphere was years in the making. And it was created by people who were anything but marginal.
Let us remember Kvartal 95 – the studio Zelensky himself once founded and headed. In late 2022, presenters on its Bayraktar News program used obscene language to insult UOC clergy and read out a mock “price list”: “spit at an MP priest – 20 hryvnias”; “hit him on the left cheek and automatically on the right – 100 hryvnias.”
Some people found it funny.
But on January 2, 2023, a man burst into a UOC church in Vinnytsia and slashed the rector across the throat with a straight razor. Beneath the Kvartal video, one user later wrote: “His blood is on your hands too.”
Government officials also spoke out in sweeping terms. Oleksii Danilov, then secretary of the National Security and Defense Council, said: “This institution [the UOC – Ed.] contained many representatives of the so-called intelligence community of the Russian Federation.”
Note the distinction: he was not speaking about specific individuals whose guilt had been established in court, but about the Church as an institution. When the official responsible for national security speaks this way during wartime, millions of believers can effectively find themselves branded without trial. The rhetoric was then picked up by lawmakers, “experts,” television “religious scholars,” and bloggers.
Gradually, it was reduced to three labels: “sect,” “Muscovites,” and “FSB in cassocks.”
A recent Kyiv FM broadcast offers a telling example. Journalist Bohdan Butkevych, appearing on the program Kyiv Speaks. War with activist Maryna Koval, discussed the question: “Is there a chance to ban the Russian Church in Ukraine?”
Speaking about UOC believers, he said: “I have my own score to settle with them – with that scum who pretend to be Christians even though they are not.”
Butkevych said the point of the broadcast was to determine whether it was possible to “cut off the head of this hydra.” He called the clergy “bastards in black cassocks.” By the end of the program, Butkevych said he would gladly serve as executioner at a trial of the UOC.
And this was not 2022, when emotions were running white-hot in the first weeks of the war. Butkevych said all this after the killing at the Lavra.
Such statements are nothing new for him. Back in 2014, appearing on Hromadske.TV, he spoke of “a certain category of people who simply need to be killed.”
Twelve years have passed. He is still on the air, and no state institution has publicly responded to those words.
Imagine for a moment that a journalist on Kyiv radio called OCU members, Catholics, Greek Catholics, Jews, or Muslims “scum” and volunteered to become their executioner. How long would it take for the National Council, prosecutors, or perhaps even the president himself to respond? Hardly more than a day.
But when such things are said about UOC Orthodox Christians, no one bats an eye.
Metropolitan Timotheos of Bostra of the Jerusalem Patriarchate put the danger this way: “When people are taught for years to see an enemy in their baptized brother, sooner or later someone will inevitably carry that idea to its ultimate conclusion.”
The Odesa Eparchy of the UOC put it more simply: “Words have consequences.”
And there is the answer to why the authorities remain silent about Sviatohirsk. If they seriously condemn the murder of Fr. Varsonofiy, they will have to admit that it has a prehistory.
And there are too many familiar faces in that prehistory – from former Kvartal colleagues to the former secretary of the National Security and Defense Council.
It is far easier to pretend nothing happened.
But when the head of state remains silent in a situation like this, that silence is still perceived as a signal.
The signal was understood correctly
Mosiychuk, as we have already noted, called this silence a “signal to the military.” Someone may argue with that. But what is happening in practice speaks for itself.
First – mobilization.
Reports appear almost daily of UOC priests being detained by Territorial Recruitment Center (TRC) officers. At the same time, we have repeatedly stressed that the Church is not asking for any special privileges for its clergy. The issue is equal treatment and the fact that, under Church canons, a priest cannot take up arms – something DESS is perfectly well aware of.
Under the Geneva Conventions, military chaplains are considered noncombatants. Yet in Ukraine, UOC priests are sent to the front regardless of their clerical status or cassocks.
Second – the information environment.
Butkevych is not an exception. He simply says openly what others say in more veiled terms. When a capital-city radio station discusses how to “cut off the hydra’s head,” while the news routinely speaks of “Moscow priests,” a simple picture takes shape in people’s minds: these people are beyond the pale, and no one will stand up for them.
Bishop Job of Stuttgart warned about precisely this. He said that violence against a representative of a Church “that for many years in Ukraine has stood on the brink of a state ban” takes us “back to the days of early Christianity, when representatives of a religio illicita – a forbidden religion – could and should be destroyed for the good of society.”
And third – impunity.
Almost four years have passed since the attack in Vinnytsia. Throughout that time, attacks on UOC priests have become neither occasions for statements from the authorities nor high-profile court cases.
Metropolitan Anthony (Pakanich), Chancellor of the UOC, asked: “Has someone really been given the right to kill with impunity simply because another person is of the ‘wrong faith’?”
More than a month later, there is still no answer from the state.
And that silence is understood perfectly well by everyone – including those carrying weapons.
What the authorities should remember
Ukraine’s authorities are very fond of talking about the country’s European choice and European values.
Well then, let us remember what those values say about freedom of conscience.
Article 35 of the Constitution of Ukraine guarantees everyone freedom of worldview and religion. Article 24 prohibits privileges or restrictions on grounds of religious belief. Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights, ratified by Ukraine, protects the freedom to practice one’s religion. And the European Court of Human Rights has repeatedly stressed that the state must remain neutral and impartial toward different religious denominations and has no right to decide whose faith is “correct.”
And then there is the simplest point of all: the state exists to protect the lives of its citizens. All of its citizens – not just the ones it likes.
In the European Union, which Ukraine is so eager to join, people look not only at laws governing prosecutors and anti-corruption agencies. They also look at how a state protects minorities.
German CDU member Irina Volfson put it very clearly: “Freedom of religion and the protection of minorities must never depend on which religion a person belongs to.”
The picture is a strange one.
Gather together all the reactions to the tragedy in Sviatohirsk, and it turns out that some of the loudest demands for an investigation into the killing of a Ukrainian citizen on Ukrainian soil are coming from Europe.
Kyiv simply remains silent.
Instead of an afterword
So it appears that the Ukrainian state divides the dead into those whose deaths deserve acknowledgment and those whose deaths are better left unmentioned. And the dividing line is neither citizenship nor the place where the crime occurred.
It is church affiliation.
UOC believers will remember this.
They do not need to be told what war is. Many of them are fighting. Many are burying their sons. Many have lost their homes.
They do not need anyone to explain what it means to love Ukraine. They understand perfectly well. And they see everything – above all, the radically different responses to the same kind of crime.
The tragedy is that while the authorities remain silent, the Butkevychs keep talking.
And where the Butkevychs keep talking, sooner or later someone will once again pick up a weapon and walk to the gates of a monastery. And by then, he will no longer care which one.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWyuarg0Sb4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zjv-7T16b0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FIMtMvr0jZg
DISRESPECTED Patriarch Bartholomew!
It is me, AVRAMENKO Tetyana, Ukrainian friend of ORTHODOX REFLECTIONS and I DO NOT RESPECT YOU!
I would like to tell you that after the BLOODY SCHISM—in which you, “Your Holiness,” were a direct participant—it is unlikely that you will be welcomed into the Kingdom of Heaven. You are up to your neck in the BLOOD of the Orthodox faithful of the UOC and in all the lawlessness perpetrated by Zelensky, the SBU, the Ukrainian police, Ukrainian courts and media, the Ukrainian parliament, and their entire entourage in Ukraine. And what will you, Patriarch Bartholomew, say at the Judgment before God, before your soul—if it does not REPENT—descends into HELL? Here is important information regarding the lawlessness and inaction of the Ukrainian authorities, carried out with the support of Patriarch Bartholomew in Ukraine. ETERNAL SHAME UPON THEM ALL!
https://spzh.eu/en/news/95221-a-monk-was-brutally-murdered-at-the-svyatogorsk-lavra-two-others-wounded
Monk brutally murdered, two others wounded at Sviatohirsk Lavra23 August 21:30
Unidentified assailants attacked members of the monastic brotherhood with a knife, leaving one dead and two seriously wounded.
On August 23, 2026, a group of unidentified assailants attacked the brotherhood of the UOC’s Holy Dormition Sviatohirsk Lavra, monastery representatives told the UOJ.
The attack occurred at around 11:00 a.m. near St. Nicholas Church in the upper part of the monastery. Monk Varsonofiy was brutally stabbed to death, and his face was mutilated beyond recognition.
Monk Grigory, whose lung was punctured by a knife, and novice Andriy were also wounded. Both are in serious condition at a hospital in Kharkiv.
Investigative and operational measures are currently underway.
The UOJ will continue to follow developments.
The UOJ previously reported that a UOC archimandrite had been beaten during the seizure of a cathedral in Kremenchuk.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/JvbqgD9d8IE
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/vM8ACv4JsMY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1NjlFdEojI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-v6f4JZrNk4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Os-kRlnrJy4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJwdP1Mt2t0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGgeWDeMWNE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKAOAxfSB60
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKAOAxfSB60
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKAOAxfSB60
Don’t expect much help by the parish leaders of the Greek Orthodox Church in protesting the desecration of the Original Church of Christ in being used to honor the Anti Christ and his team, however, God will use his church at St. Nicholas Shrine ..his Church and ours, not the Greek Archdiocese or State Departments Churches , which will convene a hearing to present the Case of God against the Devil and his court .. who will be revealed as the destroyers of Christianity and Humanity, and never the Saviors of the World .. God’s world ….
There is one common denominator of Greek Media, Ahepa, Bartholomew , Epidophoros, the Greek Archdiocese of America, Archons, and Mistotakis and the Greek Regime, they all support the Neo Nazi Jewish Zionist regime of Zelensky, Netanyahu, and the Evangelical Protestant Christian Zionist Regimes of America and EU/Nato , who will be charged at the Venue to honor Zelensky, for being “State Sponsors of Terrorism ” against Orthodox Christians and Christians in the Ukraine , Russia, Serbia, Iraq, lebanon, Gaza, Syria, Palestine, and most of the middle East and Europe! This reflex the fact that Greece and Cyprus are now captured as “Colonies” by the now acknowledged Zionist states , not Christian States of America and Israel .. Period! Consequently, Mistotakis and the Government , like in U.S , Israel and Ukraine are criminal enterprises who demand compliance of the Churches, Media, Justice Department, law enforcement and Law Makers of the parliament of
Greece and Cyprus, if not they will be removed from their positions, like Zelensky did in the Ukraine ! I bet, that the Turkish, U.S. and Israeli emissary also met with his Nato partners in Greece, right before… they invaded the Orthodox Christians of Cyprus and terrorized the civilian population , murdered them, and burned their churches and homes …just like Zelensky and Netqnyahue did in Ukraine and Gaza , and which was allowed by Nato leader.. Evangelical Protestant Christian Zionist America! What ever , intelligence they were sharing , they share with Israel and America , not the people of Greece or Cyprus! The bottomline .. All crimes committed by Trump, Biden , Obama and Clinton against Russia, Ukraine and the world .. make Greece and Cyprus accessories to those Crimes.. including genocide and being state sponsors of Terrorism. None of the acts of war by Trump and his Evangelical Christian Zionist Crusaders have been approved as constitutionally mandated by vote of the peoples representatives in Congress! And why, because the Zionist know that every one of them would be draged out of office, they put their name on document that declared war on Russia or any other country in the world! And the same goes for Greece and Cyprus! Consequently, all these acts of war without a declaration of war, become nothing less than Unilateral ” State Sponsored Terrorism” by the “Ruling Political Zionist parties of America, not the will of the people! And that is enough to send Turkish, Israeli, U.S and EU Nato emissaries down the well’s like the Spartans did . when the Persian emissary came and asked for the “Land and Water” of Sparta!
Zelensky’s Press Secretary Reveals All: Cocaine, Cover-ups, and the Only Obstacle Preventing Peace
https://tuckercarlson.com/tucker-show-iuliia-mendel-051126
On the 2025 Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI), the historically corrupt Ukraine maintains a solid F-average, at 36 percent.
Where’d all the money go? One shudders to think. Shame on the Ukrainians for tolerating this situation; shame on the Americans for propping it up.
Cassandra’s article is spot on. But what are we laity to do if we’re ignored, as has been their track record? It’s not too soon to formulate a plan B and one that adds teeth to your condemnations. Given that this sordid fundraiser is all about $$$, your only recourse may to bite the money-grubbers where they will feel it most: their pockets. Yep, I’m talking about withholding parish dollars. If it comes to that, it’s going to take a sizeable, courageous laity and their faithful priests to stand together on this, for what will surely be a showdown. Keep OR readers posted on this. Thx.
The Greek Archdiocese members are the only ones who could truly exercise the power of the purse. May they choose wisely.
I signed the petition because your premise is correct. However, I must answer your question “Who honors a tyrant”? The answer is obvious. Those who follow “he who is without equal”. That’s who. It’s the all too prevalent attitude of too many professing Greek Orthodox in this country who think there is a way to bring together Free Masonry and Orthodoxy. Oh…my mistake I should have said Hellenism and Orthodoxy. Is there a difference?
Think this way instead: Who Allows a Tyrant to Be Honored?
If you’re Orthodox, the Zelensky dinner is your problem, whether or not you’re Greek.
Sign the petition, and then follow up with a phone call.
Here are phone numbers. Deliver a brief, polite message to whomever answers the phone: “I am calling to let the archbishop, trustees, and archons know that I oppose their September dinner for Mr. Zelensky of Ukraine. Thank you.”
Office of the Archbishop: 212-570-3511
St. Nicholas Church & National Shrine: 212-227-0773
Archons of the Ecumenical Patriarchate: 212-570-3550
For the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church.
For all the suffering Ukrainians, including the repressed Ukrainian Church, the widows, the orphans, the injured, and the dead from the war, the imprisoned and beaten clerics, monks, and parishioners, the journalists and anti-corruption leaders — and the American ex-pat blogger Gonzalo Lira, who died in Ukrainian custody.
The Zelensky dinner is not just a GOARCH scandal. It is part of a political‑religious operation involving the U.S. State Department, and “identified” congressional and adminstration actors, foreign agents, and media networks who back persecution of Orthodox Christians !
While they honor themselves and Zelensky, The Criminal complaint honors not only the Orthodox Christian Churches and faithful of Urkaine , but in memory of the persecuted and murdered Orthodox Christians of Cyprus which bring Justice to their families !
It’s not different than the IOCC inviting Senator Sarbanes, a Greek Orthodox Democrat Senator from Maryland for many years who had amassed a 100% approval rating from NARAL on the question of abortion, to their 20th Anniversary Gala. It was slated to take place the evening of May 8, 2012. Sarbanes was invited to be an honorary chairman at the gala.
It seems quite common for there to be either politically progressive or simply… what shall we call them…. lukewarm or sycophant people in the Church.
Come to the Twin Cities. You’ll meet these folks in so many parishes here. In the Greek church. In the OCA. In the Antiochian church. They’re everywhere.
Sarbanes also got the GOARCH Human Rights award. The same one given to the CEO of Pfizer and the other developers of the mRNA murder jabs. Sarbanes got it for the Sarbanes Oxley bill that turned into a fiasco.