K
KyivAndrew
Guest
The Venerable JP2’s biographer George Weigel has written a very astute article on the current religious and political crises engulfing Ukraine under its new pro-Kremlin president Yanukovych in the National Review. He explains the situation better than I could so I quote from the article:
"…even the most pessimistic analysts have been surprised at how rapidly President Yanukovych’s administration has moved his country closer to the Russian orbit, not just strategically (e.g., by extending until 2042 the Russian Black Sea fleet’s lease on its Crimean port at Sevastopol and by reversing Ukraine’s previous policy of seeking admission to NATO) but also in terms of political culture.
Examples of this ominous trend abound:
The presidential inaugurations of Leonid Kuchma in 1999 and Viktor Yushchenko in 2005 were both preceded by ecumenical and interreligious prayer services in Kiev, with representatives of various religious bodies offering prayers for the new president and for the nation — a welcome sign that the foundations of civil society were being rebuilt in typically fractious Ukraine, and a popular enough innovation that the practice was legally codified in a presidential decree governing future inaugurations. Viktor Yanukovych ignored this precedent (and law) and invited one man, a non-Ukrainian, to offer prayers for his government on the day before his inauguration: Kirill, Patriarch of Moscow and of All Russia. Since taking office, Yanukovych has met only with representatives of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church–Moscow Patriarchate, one of three Orthodox factions in Ukraine and, as its name suggests, a church fully aligned with Moscow.
Kirill, who would not have been elected Patriarch in 2009 without at least the tacit consent of Vladimir Putin and who, like other Russian Orthodox prelates of his generation, once had close ties to the KGB, has not hesitated to insert himself into internal Ukrainian affairs under Yanukovych’s new order. When the controversial nomination of Dmytro Tabachnyk as minister of education got stuck because of protests from parliamentarians of Yanukovych’s own party who questioned Tabachnyk’s integrity, Patriarch Kirill personally lobbied President Yanukovych to see through the nomination. Tabachnyk has slandered Cardinal Husar’s Greek Catholics and has been known to claim that western Ukraine (the heartland of Ukrainian Greek Catholicism) isn’t really Ukraine, linguistically or culturally — which may or may not be a cultural assertion in service to a political agenda, namely, the hiving-off of western Ukraine from a Ukraine that would move towards the kind of de facto reconnection to Russia that has been effected in Belarus.
As education minister, Tabachnyk is expected to bring the teaching of modern history in Ukrainian schools into line with Putin’s efforts to restore the narrative of the “Great Patriotic War” of 1941–45 in Russian schools — an effort that ignores 1939–1941, the years of the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact and Stalin’s alliance with Nazi Germany. This is hardly surprising; Tabachnyk has denied that the Soviet-enforced Ukrainian terror-famine in the 1930s — a pivotal drama in Ukrainian history in which perhaps as many as 6 million people were deliberately starved to death — was a genocide…"
The full article is well-worth the read to illustrate what is happening in one of Europe’s largest countries and can be read at this link.
article.nationalreview.com/434862/troubles-in-ukraine/george-weigel?page=1
"…even the most pessimistic analysts have been surprised at how rapidly President Yanukovych’s administration has moved his country closer to the Russian orbit, not just strategically (e.g., by extending until 2042 the Russian Black Sea fleet’s lease on its Crimean port at Sevastopol and by reversing Ukraine’s previous policy of seeking admission to NATO) but also in terms of political culture.
Examples of this ominous trend abound:
The presidential inaugurations of Leonid Kuchma in 1999 and Viktor Yushchenko in 2005 were both preceded by ecumenical and interreligious prayer services in Kiev, with representatives of various religious bodies offering prayers for the new president and for the nation — a welcome sign that the foundations of civil society were being rebuilt in typically fractious Ukraine, and a popular enough innovation that the practice was legally codified in a presidential decree governing future inaugurations. Viktor Yanukovych ignored this precedent (and law) and invited one man, a non-Ukrainian, to offer prayers for his government on the day before his inauguration: Kirill, Patriarch of Moscow and of All Russia. Since taking office, Yanukovych has met only with representatives of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church–Moscow Patriarchate, one of three Orthodox factions in Ukraine and, as its name suggests, a church fully aligned with Moscow.
Kirill, who would not have been elected Patriarch in 2009 without at least the tacit consent of Vladimir Putin and who, like other Russian Orthodox prelates of his generation, once had close ties to the KGB, has not hesitated to insert himself into internal Ukrainian affairs under Yanukovych’s new order. When the controversial nomination of Dmytro Tabachnyk as minister of education got stuck because of protests from parliamentarians of Yanukovych’s own party who questioned Tabachnyk’s integrity, Patriarch Kirill personally lobbied President Yanukovych to see through the nomination. Tabachnyk has slandered Cardinal Husar’s Greek Catholics and has been known to claim that western Ukraine (the heartland of Ukrainian Greek Catholicism) isn’t really Ukraine, linguistically or culturally — which may or may not be a cultural assertion in service to a political agenda, namely, the hiving-off of western Ukraine from a Ukraine that would move towards the kind of de facto reconnection to Russia that has been effected in Belarus.
As education minister, Tabachnyk is expected to bring the teaching of modern history in Ukrainian schools into line with Putin’s efforts to restore the narrative of the “Great Patriotic War” of 1941–45 in Russian schools — an effort that ignores 1939–1941, the years of the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact and Stalin’s alliance with Nazi Germany. This is hardly surprising; Tabachnyk has denied that the Soviet-enforced Ukrainian terror-famine in the 1930s — a pivotal drama in Ukrainian history in which perhaps as many as 6 million people were deliberately starved to death — was a genocide…"
The full article is well-worth the read to illustrate what is happening in one of Europe’s largest countries and can be read at this link.
article.nationalreview.com/434862/troubles-in-ukraine/george-weigel?page=1
Yes, that comment about our Catholic Church being involved in “deceit” was written a while back on another thread, and I didn’t report it to the Mods then because I was quite new to CAF and innocent at the time and was not sure, and I didn’t feel comfortable at the time reporting someone else. I’ve rarely reported others’ posts except ones posted by spammers on CAF to prevent a spam attack.