DESS expert suggests dismantling and relocating UOC churches to Russia

Liudmyla Fylypovych. Photo: YouTube channel “Tse Nikhto Ne Budе Dyvytys” ["No One Is Going to Watch This"]

Liudmyla Fylypovych, a religious scholar, professor, and expert of the State Service for Ethnopolitics and Freedom of Conscience (DESS), suggested on air of Channel 5 that churches of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) should be dismantled and moved to Russia, and that UOC believers should have their “minds cleansed.”

Commenting on the demolition of the Desiatynnyi Church, Fylypovych stated that the authorities “did the right thing.”

“There was so much noise when that kiosk was removed – it was built completely without permits and without any right to exist. We’ve lived without that kiosk for two or three years now. The world didn’t end. Everything’s fine; the area was cleaned up,” she said rather cynically, adding that “the state currently lacks the resources to inspect everything we have and finally bring order.”

She insisted that there is no place for the UOC in Ukraine.

“If you are a Russian Church, then you have no place in Ukraine. You have a vast territory – the Russian Federation. There are so many opportunities to build your churches there. We could even help move them – dismantle one here and reassemble it there. No problem,” the professor declared.

At the same time, she said that UOC believers should have their minds cleansed.

“People need to have their minds cleaned out – those who once wrote ‘Ukrainian’ in their passports, received Ukrainian passports, but still live with ideas of a single state where Moscow is the capital of our homeland. To be at this stage of war and still think like that – I think that’s a clinical case, a disease,” Fylypovych said, calling to “help these people recover spiritually.”

As an example of a spiritual model, she pointed to the OCU, where, according to her, “a completely normal Orthodox religious life” exists.

Earlier, the UOJ reported that Fylypovych had urged the authorities to use the experience of Soviet ‘builders of communism’ in promoting the OCU among the population.

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