Republican youth leader: UOC persecution weakens Ukraine in wartime

Catherine Whiteford does not understand why the authorities persecute believers whose relatives are at the front. Photo: Youtube Buck Johnson

The youth leader of the Republican Party of the USA, Catherine Whiteford, emphasized in the Counterflow podcast with Buck Johnson that the persecutions of the UOC, initiated by the authorities, are evidently harming Ukraine, which is at war with the Russian Federation.

"I really think it hurts the Ukrainian military effort, to be completely honest. If Ukraine is trying to fight a just war and defend themselves, which they are doing, why are they persecuting people who are literally sending their own family members to the front?" Catherine posed a rhetorical question to her interlocutor.

She emphasized that many parishioners of the UOC, whose churches are being seized by the OCU, have sons who died at the front. "Even their own metropolitans and bishops had family members or adopted children who died at the front," Whiteford stressed.

She cited the example of a video of a woman begging the Ukrainian official to wait to seize her church until after they were able to hold a funeral for her son, who died defending the country.

"Therefore, I don't understand... If there are allegedly members of the UOC who are doing something to try to undermine their own government, then go after those specific individuals. But to go after the entire religious entity that has been there for over a thousand years is absurd. It's like expecting for specific Muslims in America to have to answer and defend themselves over something that some other Muslims that committed a terrorist act did that they have no conrnection to. So I just don't understand it. It's something I'm still trying to understand myself," Catherine emphasized.

Earlier, the UOJ reported that young Republicans in the USA published an investigation about the persecutions of the UOC.

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