Attack on the Tithes Church is the attack on national identity, – expert

Верующие встали на защиту Десятинного монастыря

Andrei Vidishenko, an expert of the Kiev Center for Political and Conflict Resolution Studies Studies, believes that the attack on the Tithes Church is an attack on statehood. This opinion was expressed by the political expert in the commentary to the "First Cossack" channel.

"All events around the Tithes Church on the territory of the Kiev Detinets are in fact a deliberate attack on our spiritual national and historical essense," Vidishenko said. "Because Orthodoxy is the core element of our national identity, the attack on the UOC, the Church that has been guiding our people for a thousand years since the baptism of Rus by the Holy Prince Vladimir Equal-to-the-Apostles, in fact, such covens around the Tithes Church against the Orthodox Church are an attempt to shake our statehood and its foundations. In the hearts of the people who are engaged in activities against the Holy Vladimir and Olga’s Church, anger and militant vulgarity are sown."

The expert believes that the activities of the radicals and neo-pagans are aimed at discrediting the UOC.

"In the 21st century, in the very center of the capital of a large European state, there is actually a battle between a thousand-crowd of parishioners of the Tithes Monastery and a small group of fanatics represented by a specific denomination with the participation of neo-pagans, representatives of the "Fern Flower" sect, led by a number of national radical figures, who went on a rampage against the Orthodox Church," Vidishenko stressed. "And this is near the ruins of the first temple in Russia, built by St. Vladimir in the tenth century and re-consecrated under Yaroslav the Wise in the XI century. The entire process is an indicator of the degradation of state institutions and the degradation of society, an element of systemic rhetoric against Orthodoxy in Ukraine. This is an attempt to push out the UOC from the positions it occupies."

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