Why the defense of UOC is “Achilles’ heel” of Ukrainian government lobbyists
In public, lobbyists for the Ukrainian authorities in the United States insist that there is no persecution of the Church in Ukraine. In reality, they know everything perfectly well and are aware of every single case.
On December 18, two events took place in Ukraine and the United States that, at first glance, seemed unrelated.
In Volodymyr, MP Huz announced that he would expel the community of the Dormition Cathedral of the UOC – already driven out of its own church – even from the tiny chapel where parishioners now hold their services. Or rather, “hold” them… Only clergy can fit inside; the faithful stand outside in the street.
But that is not enough for Huz. He wants to drive people out of there as well. He initiated appeals to the Prosecutor General’s Office and local authorities “so that the Moscow church would be evicted from this religious building in the near future.” This is a textbook example of discrimination against Ukrainians on religious grounds – the very discrimination which, according to the assurances of the Ukrainian authorities, supposedly does not exist.
And in the United States, just two days after the summit in defense of the UOC near the Capitol, lobbyists for the Ukrainian government in Washington from the “American Coalition for Ukraine” presented an “internal” document in which this and other actions in defense of the UOC were gloomily described as a “problem” and “our Achilles’ heel.”
Let us stress this point: it was an insider document, “for internal use,” and therefore people wrote what they really think. In public, just like the Ukrainian authorities, they broadcast that there is no persecution of the Church in Ukraine. But in reality, they know everything perfectly well and are aware of every single case. They have only one concern – how to conceal these persecutions or pass them off as “Russian propaganda.”
And these people see nothing shameful in what they are doing. As the wolf in the old cartoon “Once Upon a Dog” said: “It’s just my job.”
Exactly the same kind of “job” is being done by Zelensky, Yelensky, and others like Huz and Poturaev. They, just like their “friends” in America, also consider the UOC problem an “Achilles’ heel” – but not because they seriously see in it a “Russian threat” or an “FSB network.”
But because they cannot hide their work aimed at destroying it.
Futile and self-defeating work.
