Orthodox Reflections

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.