Expert: Authorities' campaign against UOC resembles Khrushchev's actions

Religious expert Nikolai Mitrokhin. Photo: traditia.md

Nikolai Mitrokhin, a researcher at the Center for Eastern European Studies at the University of Bremen, said that the Ukrainian authorities are using the same methods to fight the UOC that Nikita Khrushchev once used to fight religion in the USSR. He said this in an interview with Dialog.Tut.

“This campaign (against the UOC – Ed.) is being carried out by people who come from among the Soviet atheists, using the same methods: from raging youth to the selection of churches, allegedly at the request of the workers. <...> I don’t see any logic in this, except that it is necessary to force the Church to take a certain kind of political position and become part of the OCU through tough pressure,” he said.

Mitrokhin also noted that today representatives of the UOC "are reproached for what is not prohibited in principle."

According to the expert, in Ukraine there is "an obvious violation of human rights, a massive one, which they try to justify with the issues of state security."

As an example, Mitrokhin cited cases in which Ukrainian intelligence services try to attract people for words said “a certain number of years ago or for literature that was freely distributed for decades.”

As the UOJ reported, the UN recorded a surge in violence and hate speech against the UOC.

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