MP urges to ease pressure on UOC for sake of peace

Oleksii Honcharenko. Photo: Honcharenko's FB page

European Solidarity MP Oleksii Honcharenko said Ukraine could make compromises in the humanitarian sphere, including on Church issues, for the sake of achieving peace. He wrote about this on his Telegram channel.

The lawmaker named three areas where, in his view, compromise is possible: language, the Church, and historical memory.

Addressing religion, Honcharenko said Church issues “cannot be resolved in one, two, three, or four years” because they “take centuries.”

“The Church is about worshiping God, about faith, love, and doing good to one’s neighbor. We have the OCU, we have Greek Catholics, and we have many Protestants. If there are a dozen or so people who want to attend the Russian Orthodox Church, let them. The main thing is to make sure that what they talk about there is God, not betraying the Motherland. I think the state is capable of doing that,” the MP wrote.

Regarding the language issue, he said Europeans are demanding that Ukraine bring its language legislation into line with European standards and expressed confidence that the Rada would vote accordingly.

“Let Russian be treated on the same terms. We have huge Russian-speaking cities, and believe me, the people there are greater patriots than anywhere else. Because those are the very cities being bombed every day,” he stressed, adding that Ukrainian should remain the language of education, culture, and science.

“I understand that this is difficult. But we need to talk about it. We need PEACE,” the lawmaker concluded.

In a subsequent post, he added that this approach was in fact an embodiment of Poroshenko’s slogan, “Army, Language, Faith!”

“Because only by preserving Ukraine will we be able to have a strong Army, cherish our Language, and preserve our Faith,” Honcharenko wrote.

Earlier, the UOJ wrote that Honcharenko demanded to forcibly expel the monks from the Lavra and hand it over to the OCU.

Read also