MP Bobrovska vs. UOC: How enmity toward fellow Ukrainians ruins
According to Bobrovska's upside-down logic, UOC believers support the Ukrainian army while supposedly awaiting a Russian invasion.
Masked activists who intimidated monks, believers, and lawyers during court hearings and pressured judges played a major role in the appellate court's decision to deny the UOC the right to hold services at the Dormition Cathedral and the Refectory Church of the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra.
But we should also address a more "civilized" form of pressure on the court – that exerted by current and former members of parliament. One of them, Solomiia Bobrovska, attended the hearings and used the breaks to publicly discuss "brainwashed" UOC believers and why the judges should rule against the Church.
Bobrovska devoted one of her social media videos to criticizing Valentyna Illina, whom she called a "so-called Orthodox journalist." Ilyina had dared to suggest that by inciting hostility toward the UOC, Bobrovska was violating the Law on the Status of People's Deputies of Ukraine, which requires lawmakers to respect the honor and dignity of all Ukrainian citizens.
Bobrovska insisted that she was accountable not to all Ukrainians but only to voters of the Holos (Voice) party, which, she said, "has always opposed the Russian Orthodox Church as a vast network of Russian agents and opposed its presence in Ukraine."
She again described UOC believers as "brainwashed" and addressed them directly:
"Even though you deliver humanitarian aid to people or to our guys in the Armed Forces, you do it as though you're waiting for an invasion."
This is the central point of her remarks. To anyone with common sense, it is obvious that helping the Ukrainian Armed Forces while "waiting for an invasion" is a contradiction. Someone who wants an invasion would never support the army, and vice versa.
So what does the lawmaker's statement tell us? That UOC believers can do absolutely anything, including the most patriotic acts imaginable, yet Bobrovska and those who share her views will still regard them as "FSB agents," "Muscovites," "brainwashed," and so on. In short, as enemies.
And how are enemies treated? If they cannot be physically eliminated, they are destroyed in other ways – stripped of their rights, their good names, and their property. What awaits a country when politicians like Bobrovska treat millions of their fellow citizens this way?
Valentyna Illina was absolutely right to point out that this approach not only violates the Law on the Status of People's Deputies of Ukraine but also destroys Ukraine from within.
Bobrovska's remarks about Illina's past work for UOJ also deserve attention. The lawmaker claimed that the UOJ "had been recognized as a disseminator of Russian propaganda" and that its journalists had "for some reason been served with notices of suspicion of high treason."
"Why, then, Ms. Valentina, don't you want to explain this to your parishioners, believers, and your audience?" Bobrovska demanded.
We will answer the lawmaker directly.
No court has ever ruled that the UOJ is a disseminator of Russian propaganda – that is false. And our journalists were placed in pretrial detention on suspicion of high treason precisely "thanks" to the same logic used to cast off UOC believers as enemies, regardless of how patriotic their actions may be. Simply because they belong to this Church.
It is the same upside-down logic Bobrovska employs: those who help the army must be waiting for an invasion.
And Ukraine, where politicians like Bobrovska persecute millions of people at the highest levels of government simply for having the "wrong" faith, will find it extremely difficult to survive this war and secure its future.
And the Church certainly will not be to blame.
