Expert on DESS deferrals: Pagans from “Orthodoxy” and “Svit Dazhbozhyi”

Liudmyla Fylypovych. Photo: radiosvoboda

The list of “critical enterprises” published by DESS includes religious organizations so “exotic” that they might have barely a couple of dozen followers. Religious studies expert Liudmyla Fylypovych discussed this in a comment to Telegraf.

According to the expert, the list did not include any UOC communities, which she says “no longer operate under the law and are simply civic associations.” Meanwhile, among those deemed “critical” were confessions and cults that most people have never even heard of.

For example, the religious organizations of the Old Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OOCU) – the so-called Old Believers. There are only about 50 OOCU parishes in Ukraine. Before the full-scale invasion, the OOCU was in Eucharistic communion with the Moscow Metropolis, but subsequently broke that connection.

Fylypovych also notes that the number of parishes belonging to the “Brotherhood of the Righteous Hetman Petro Konashevych-Sahaidachny” is not even listed on the organization’s own website. Yet it has its own militarized wing called “Voanerges,” which is legally registered as a private security company.

The list of “critical” groups even includes pagans from the religious community “Fern Flower.” According to the Unified State Register, the community is registered to an apartment in the capital, with Vyacheslav Tolpiha listed as its head. Nothing is known about him except that a person with this name has two active enforcement proceedings against him.

“Or take the oxymoron of the Ukrainian pagan community ‘Orthodoxy’ in Kyiv’s Solomianskyi District. This ‘church’ was founded by writer and ethnologist Halyna Lozko. How many followers it actually has, or whether there are any at all, is unknown. But one thing can be said for certain: deferring 73-year-old Lozko from mobilization is clearly unnecessary,” the expert remarks.

She also wryly mentions the “critical” designation for the Religious Community of the Native Ukrainian National Faith ‘Svit Dazhbozhyi.’

“Judging by the name, it’s some kind of neo-pagan cult led, according to the register, by a Vinnytsia sole proprietor named Vitalii Pekhota. Apart from worshipping the sun god, a person with this name also engages in retail trading from market stalls,” Fylypovych comments.

In addition, she notes that the DESS list includes structures whose official names contain the word “Russian.” For example, the religious community of the Church of the Protection of the Holy Virgin of the Russian Orthodox Old-Rite Church.

Previously, the UOJ examined other oddities in how Ukrainian clergy have been granted deferrals.

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