"Entertaining Maths" of the Opponents of the UOC

On July 30, a critical article was posted on the website religion.in.ua about the number of the faithful of the UOC, who took part in the celebrations to commemorate the Millennium of the demise of the Holy Prince Vladimir Equal-to-the-Apostles and the Day of Baptism of Rus’. It goes about a prayer service at Vladimir's Hill, and the procession, organized by the UOC.

Its authors questioned the data, voiced by official representatives of the UOC, although the figure of 20-30 thousand believers was fully confirmed by hundreds of photos and dozens of videos. In addition, the official figure, voiced by law enforcement bodies, is not 6,000, as it was written in the article on the site, but about15,000 people( in contrast, the column of the UOC(KP) in Kiev, according to the data on the official site of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, comes up to 600 people, while some mass media gave the incredible figure of 15,000 believers; why this discrepancy did not attract the attention of those who write about the UOC is not clear).

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Generally, it could be accounted for the authors’ carelessness – they didn’t follow the updated data of the police, but for the picture posted in confirmation of the "paucity" of a procession of the UOC. What do we see in it? If we read the satellite map to get our bearings, it turns out that in the picture the column of the faithful, led by the Primate of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, stretches almost 10 meters long from turning on Petrovskaya Alley, and slightly up the street. This fact alone is enough to suspect the absurdity of this "optical illusion" and clumsy work in Photoshop. If you compare with other photographs, everything fits together.

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July 31 was an end date for a poll conducted by the site RISU on what religious leader inspires most trust among Ukrainians. It shows that Sheikh Ahmed Tamim…rates first with 68.9% of votes! No comments.

In our opinion, these surveys have long failed to inspire confidence, and the main criterion of strength of varying denominations is the number of religious communities. It should be recalled that it’s the Ukrainian Orthodox Church which has the largest number of registered Orthodox religious communities - more than 12 thousand parishes.

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