When Christ and Mother of God fall among the ‘Muscals’
Broken icons from the UOC church in Novosilky after the OCU takeover. Photo: Screenshot from Dozor video
In Novosilky, Kyiv region, activists of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, who seized the Church of the Nativity of the Mother of God, organized a ‘clean-up’ in the temple. Many mangled icons of Christ, the Virgin Mary and St Nicholas ended up in the trash. The UOC believers with tears in their eyes pulled out the Gospel, the Law of God, St Luke's book ‘I Loved Suffering’ and a lot of other spiritual literature from the heap of garbage.
Just yesterday such a thing seemed unthinkable – well, a Christian cannot burn and throw holy things in the rubbish. But today it is a reality. And the OCU has been moving towards this tragic reality systematically and consistently.
In 2019 in Kurozvany, Rivne region, the activists of the OCU broke the doors of the house church of the UOC (they had seized the temple itself earlier) and threw the altar right on the road. No one “from above” reprimanded them. What's the big deal? After all, this is a “Muscal church”.
In April 2023, after the seizure of the church in Trebukhiv, OCU activists declared the Bible “rubbish” (only because it was printed in Moscow) and threw it into a rubbish dump together with prayer books (published, by the way, in Kyiv). And again, no one in the leadership of the OCU reacted to this. Could they have reacted? After all, Dumenko clearly outlined the strategy of his structure just the day before – everything “non-Ukrainian” will be strictly discarded. In January 2023, he called on Ukrainians to abandon their "Russian" saints and choose saints of other nationalities. And already in 2024, the OCU Synod removed Saint Alexander Nevsky, the Kyiv Prince, from the calendar of saints.
So, the trend is clear – any, even the faintest "shadow of Moscow", must be "excluded" from the saints, and one must renounce their heavenly patron. Ordinary people have simply taken a step further – if the Gospel was printed in Moscow, throw it in the trash. If the icon hung in the "wrong" church – break it and trample it underfoot.
And the problem is not that we want to tarnish the OCU in some way. It is much deeper. In fact, the strategy of this structure has led to a situation where, under the guise of fighting the ‘Muscals’, they are fighting against the Church and God. And this is no exaggeration – the destruction of icons and the Holy Scriptures speaks for itself.
By the way, in Novosilky, along with icons and Bibles, a "nationalist’s Bible" – "History of Ukraine-Rus" by Hrushevsky – was found in the trash. A cognitive dissonance, indeed.
Read also
On the mobilization of a priest as a sniper
A man who has chosen the path of the priesthood has no right to join the army and take up a weapon. And the very idea of killing another human being is all the more absurd.
On statistics: how many Orthodox, Muslims and Jews we have
Trust in the Razumkov Center's research methods on the topic of Orthodoxy is minimal.
Why helping children with cancer is a threat to state security
We should have long got used to the antics of some MPs, especially those who furiously hate the UOC. But they don't stop surprising us.
Is Ramadan closer to the authorities than Great Lent?
Have Muslims and Jews – who together make up just over one percent of the country’s population – become a privileged class? And yet Ukraine is widely seen as a Christian country.
Prayer for Zelensky
If Dumenko composes a “prayer” for a visit to parliament in which the president, the Rada, and the government are each listed separately, we understand that these words are addressed not to God, but to the people who invited him into the Rada.
DESS: We protect Muslims but ignore the UOC
The authorities rush to shield a small group of Muslims – many of them from other ethnic backgrounds – yet they demonstratively ignore the harassment of millions of Orthodox Ukrainians.