Expert: Playing a religious card will lead to Zelensky's defeat

Vladimir Zelensky. Photo: RBC Ukraine

Political expert, head of the "Third Sector" centre Andrei Zolotarev said in a commentary to "Strana" that if the President of Ukraine Vladimir Zelensky follows in the footsteps of Petro Poroshenko on the church issue, it will end in a devastating defeat for him.

“Playing a religious card will lead to a strategic defeat for Zelensky, a devastating one,” the political scientist noted.  “Autumn and winter already promise to be problematic for Zelensky, these are tariff wars and the expectation of a new quarantine. If anti-church activities are still added here, it may turn out to be a disaster for the authorities."

He explained that most of the OCU supporters are not the core of Zelensky's electorate, as well as the Greek Catholics and the “fragments of the Kyiv Patriarchate”, and therefore for them the strengthening of the religious component “will look like a ridiculous flirting”: for voter s who supports “army, language, faith”, there is Poroshenko, and they do not need Zelensky.

The majority of UOC believers voted for the incumbent President, "and it is they who he will lose", the political expert emphasized.

“Zelensky was needed by those who wanted the government not to aggravate the church schism,” he said.

As reported, according to analyst Dmitry Korneichuk, Zelensky deliberately uses provocations in the religious sphere.

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