Kremlin official slams violence against members of Moscow-ruled Orthodox Church in Ukraine

Natalya Mihailova | 12 December 2014
Moscow, December 11, Interfax - President Vladimir Putin's chief of staff, Sergey Ivanov, has slammed violence in Ukraine against the Orthodox Christian community governed by the Moscow Patriarchate.
Kremlin official slams violence against members of Moscow-ruled Orthodox Church in Ukraine

“With complete connivance from the authorities, more than 60 attacks have taken place in Ukraine since the start of the year – physical attacks on church buildings and priests of the Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate. All this, by the way, is happening in the center of enlightened and civilized Europe – I’d like to emphasize this,” Ivanov said at a meeting in the Kremlin on Thursday of the presidential council for liaison with religious associations.

“The illegal change of government in Ukraine in February this year led to a very serious outbreak of radicalism in general and, as a result, gave rise to mass-scale violations of law, religious intolerance and violence against believers,” he said.

This “would have been impossible if, right from the outset, public and political processes had been dealt with through dialogue, without external interference,” Ivanov said. “Russia has always advocated such an approach and will continue to advocate it.”

Ivanov said various religious minorities in the Middle East and North Africa, including the Alawites, Druze, Yazidis and Christians, Catholics and Orthodox alike, are under similar pressures.

“Primarily, this manifests itself in a rapid upsurge in religious extremism, which is largely a consequence of what, putting it diplomatically, have been shortsighted policies on the part of some Western countries. We can clearly see all that. Islamic State is, of course, the best example,” Ivanov said.

“In Syria and Iraq, hundreds if not thousands of Christian churches and temples representing other religions have been destroyed. Hundreds of thousands of believers and members of religious minorities have left places that have been traditionally populated by them,” he said.

He added that Baghdad’s Christian community had been halved.

Since you are here…

…we do have a small request. More and more people visit Orthodoxy and the World website. However, resources for editorial are scarce. In comparison to some mass media, we do not make paid subscription. It is our deepest belief that preaching Christ for money is wrong.

Having said that, Pravmir provides daily articles from an autonomous news service, weekly wall newspaper for churches, lectorium, photos, videos, hosting and servers. Editors and translators work together towards one goal: to make our four websites possible - Pravmir.ru, Neinvalid.ru, Matrony.ru and Pravmir.com. Therefore our request for help is understandable.

For example, 5 euros a month is it a lot or little? A cup of coffee? It is not that much for a family budget, but it is a significant amount for Pravmir.

If everyone reading Pravmir could donate 5 euros a month, they would contribute greatly to our ability to spread the word of Christ, Orthodoxy, life's purpose, family and society.