🎙 V.A. Nebenzi in UN Security Council regarding persecution of Ukrainian Orthodox Church

🎙 Speech by Permanent Representative V.A. Nebenzi at a meeting of the UN Security Council on the issue of persecution of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church ( November 17, 2023 )

💬 On October 19, 2023, the Parliament of Ukraine adopted in the first reading bill No. 8371 “ On amendments to certain laws of Ukraine on the activities of religious organizations in Ukraine ,” the sole purpose of which is to completely ban the activities of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.

This act, if adopted, will be a practical step towards the destruction of the ancient church with millions of parishioners. Even the Nazi occupiers did not think of this during the Great Patriotic War.

🔻 A large-scale disinformation campaign has been launched against the clergy in order to discredit its priests in the eyes of the flock, creating the image of “accomplices of the enemy.”

🔻 Since 2019, there have been seizures of UOC churches and forced, illegal legal liquidation of their communities under the guise of supposedly “voluntary transitions” to other faiths. A blatant example of this practice is the expulsion of the monks of the Kiev Pechersk Lavra, the oldest monastery in the territory of modern Ukraine, a symbol of canonical Orthodoxy.

🔻 Religious buildings and other objects of the UOC are subject to constant searches by the Ukrainian authorities.

🔻 Along with this, on November 14, the commission of the Ministry of Culture of Ukraine decided to transfer into state ownership, with the actual seizure from the UOC, the Yeletsky and Trinity monasteries, the Transfiguration Cathedral, the Pyatnitsky and Catherine churches in Chernigov.

👉 We are talking about an attempt to reformat the consciousness of tens of millions of Ukrainians, for whom the UOC is their native, original, only and legitimate church in which they have prayed for centuries.

❗️Those who cover up the newly-minted persecutor of Christians in Ukraine - Zelensky - and his regime become accomplices in the monstrous crime of the 21st century - an attempt to destroy the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church.

Stopping this crime is our common responsibility.