"The party of war" mobilizes against the Church, – politologist

Politologist Alexei Yakubin analyzes the "Zaporozhye wave" of attacks on the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, relating it to the successes of the peace process and the exchange of prisoners, which the so-called "war party" in power did not favor. The expert foresees an increase in the pressure on the Church on behalf of the authoroties to distract the society from their own failures, reports "The First Cossack" channel.

Alexei Yakubin says that the resonance of religious celebrations in the society, when many citizens go to church, was used to create a scandal defaming the Church: "At this moment, there appears a point of religious scandal or an attempt to unleash a scandal around the Church. I think that the fact that it coincided with a part of religious celebrations is for a reason. If we carefully look at how the scandalous moments around the UOC developed or for attempts to relate them to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church during these 10 days, we can see a purposeful policy."

"As I understand, the point of the scandal or an attempt of the authorities to launch an attack against the UOC coincided with its participation in the exchange of captives. Because it's no secret that, with the participation of Metropolitan Onufry, the UOC played one of the key roles in the prisoner swap," the expert said. "The authorities tried to take creadit for it only to President Poroshenko that he was able to achieve this in tandem with the Western partners. Someone in the power circles and in the "party of war" did not like that this first wave of exchange of prisoners took place to fulfill the 6th point of the Minsk agreements. And after that we saw an attempt to develop this scandal."

"It all started with emotional manipulation, in political science there is such a term "miranda". In this case, emotional situation was the Zaporozhye boy case," said the political analyst. "This is the creation of an emotional background with an attempt to further politicize the process towards the UOC, especially on the eve of the second stage of the exchange of prisoners planned for mid-end January."

"Miranda" (mirage, supernatural) is one of the tools for implementing political myths. Manipulation contains signals of non-verbal communication and is aimed at the emotional perception rather than rational, at the wakening of an individual's loyalty to power.