Expert: We are hostages of Poroshenko's actions to create "state church"

Kost Bondarenko. Photo: a screenshot of the YouTube channel "Information Agency Ukrainian News"

Political expert Kost Bondarenko at the press conference "Appeal of believers of the UOC to the authorities: discriminatory laws and oppression" said that the current church confrontation was initiated by Poroshenko in 2018 when, in violation of the Constitution, the former president practically created a "state church."
Bondarenko drew a parallel with the situation in the early 90s when the Kyiv Patriarchate was created and the UGCC was restored and recalled that those times were characterized by massive seizures of churches.
“It is the conflicts on a religious basis that are the most dangerous, it is very difficult to resolve them,” Bondarenko believes. “Therefore, politicians then constantly warned that the religious factor cannot be used for political purposes. Unfortunately, during the time of Petro Poroshenko, this principle was violated. A decision was made, in violation of the constitutional principle of the separation of the Church from the state, on the propaganda of the "state church". Frankly speaking, Poroshenko began to build it (the state Church – Ed.). This process was joined by foreign forces interested in the split of world Orthodoxy, which we are now seeing in other countries."
The political scientist believes that in interfaith relations, all Ukrainians have become hostages of the situation created by Petro Poroshenko’s actions to create the OCU two years ago.

As reported, more than a million believers of the UOC signed an appeal to Zelensky regarding the persecution of the Church.

Read also