On Monday 27 November, in the Sala Capranichetta of the Hotel Nazionale in ROME (Piazza Montecitorio 101), the round table organized by the Eurasia Mediterranean Study Center in collaboration with Polis Etica was held.
Dragana Trifković, director of the Center for Geostrategic Studies, spoke about the attack on Orthodoxy and religion as a whole:
Good afternoon, conference attendees. First of all, I would like to thank the organizers for inviting me to participate. The following analysis, coming from a European observation point still independent from Atlanticist and Globalist influences and interference, such as the Center for Geostrategic Studies in Belgrade which I have the honor to direct, proposes an aspect almost completely unknown in the West, so as to contribute to the reconstruction of a *realistic* picture of the complex European situation. Which is what this conference has set itself the objective of.
The topic I am going to speak about concerns the problem of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and the attack on Orthodoxy, but I would like to note at the beginning that this problem is only a segment of a special war being waged on the spiritual level, and it concerns all religions. Namely, religion as a whole is the target of the attacks of the globalist elites.
After several months of persecution of clergy and confiscation of property of the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which is under the jurisdiction of the Russian Orthodox Church, the Ukrainian Verkhovna Rada (Supreme Council) passed a law in October banning the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. Although the law is unconstitutional, 267 deputies voted in favor of it.
Earlier, the clergy and believers were expelled from the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra, the oldest monastery in modern Ukraine and one of the first monasteries of Kievan Rus, and the vicar of the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra, Metropolitan Pavel, was arrested. In many churches and monasteries of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church one can see policemen with guns, and in front of them the believers who want to enter are searched and identified.
This is terror that is carried out against the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and the believers, from confiscations, burning and desecration of churches, attacks on priests and believers, taking priests as hostages, forbidding students to approach the Spiritual Academy, etc. These activities and decisions are dictated by the Ukrainian authorities and are aimed at intimidating the believers, forcing them to give up protecting their religious freedom and sanctuaries.
At the Unification Assembly on December 15, 2018, the non-canonical Orthodox Church of Ukraine was formed in Ukraine, founded by Patriarch Bartholomew through the merger of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kyiv Patriarchate and the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church. Since then, the Patriarchate of Constantinople has contested the right of the Moscow Patriarchate to its ecclesiastical jurisdiction over the territory of Ukraine.
The hierarchy of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church has continued to reject the actions of Patriarch Bartholomew in Ukraine.
Here the question arises why the Patriarch of Constantinople is interfering in creating a schism in Orthodoxy and creating a proxy Orthodox Church of Ukraine. I think the answer lies in his closeness to the centers of power in Washington and his cooperation with the American intelligence services, as the president of the Center for the Preservation of Christian Identity, Diogenis Valavanidis, mentioned it in the recently published book “Defense of the Unity of the Orthodox Church”.
For example, in order to protect traditional values from the misuse of the concept of human freedoms, the Russian Orthodox Church issued a document on human rights that ultimately seeks to promote what we might call a particularistic approach to human rights, as opposed to the Western universalist understanding of human rights. With a clear eye on the extension of human rights to the LGBTQ community in Western European countries and the U.S., the Russian Orthodox Church advocates a notion of human rights that is linked to morality.
This, of course, puts the Russian Orthodox Church in direct conflict with globalism, with the leaders of globalism openly attacking Russia.
I quote Carl Bildt, a Swedish politician and diplomat, one of the prominent globalists: „Putin is demonstrating his adherence not to international values, but to orthodox values.“ His support for Assad in Syria can be explained by the fact that Assad has protected the Orthodox in Syria. Moreover, Orthodoxy is more dangerous than Islamic fundamentalism and therefore represents the greatest danger to Western civilization. From this sentence we can clearly understand the intolerance towards tradition and Christianity, but also who is behind the Islamic fundamentalism (Al Qaeda, Islamic State, etc.), which is actually in the service of the ideology of globalism.
Numerous attacks on Christian churches and other sacred, cultural, and historical sites in the Middle East have been carried out by militant groups such as the Islamic State, Al-Qaeda, Al-Nusra, etc., backed by Western power centers.
As an example of the destruction of Orthodoxy by the globalists, I will mention the fact that in Kosovo and Metohija, over 150 Serbian churches and monasteries from the Middle Ages were destroyed by Albanian terrorists at the time when NATO took control of this territory. The separatist authorities of Kosovo show their intentions to usurp the property of the Serbian Orthodox Church in Kosovo and Metohija and register it as the property of the so-called independent Kosovo.
Also, Serbian churches and monasteries in what is now North Macedonia have, under strange circumstances, been given up to a schismatic illegal church claiming to be the Macedonian Orthodox Church. In Croatia, the Serbian Orthodox Church has been declared bankrupt, and in Montenegro such tendencies are currently suspended, but probably only temporarily. It is known that a proxy church called the Montenegrin Orthodox Church is also registered in Montenegro.
Parallels can be drawn here with the Baltic countries, where the Russian Orthodox Church is also being prosecuted. The adoption of the law on the autocephaly of the Latvian Orthodox Church by the Latvian Parliament represents an unconstitutional interference of the secular state in the affairs of the Church.
What we can conclude from all this:
If in the past it was considered that religion denies human freedom to a certain extent, now we have come to the opposite situation where the concept of human freedom is misused to violate people’s religious rights. Also, the influence of the Church on the State was reduced (secularism), but the State, or politics, began to exert a strong influence on the Church and to interfere in the internal affairs of the Church.
As far as the Ukrainian Orthodox Church is concerned, it is not only about the violation of all human rights, but also about systematic terror, which, as we can see, has been intensified over time. The goal of all this is the complete destruction and abolition of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and the violent change of the spiritual code of the people of Ukraine, their centuries-old traditions.
All this is being done with the full consent of the Western power centers, which, although they speak loudly in favor of protecting human rights, actually encourage state terror and the violation of religious rights when it is convenient as a means of fighting against Russia.
The attack on the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and the Serbian Orthodox Church, as well as the war in Ukraine, is an integral part of the geopolitical conflict between two completely different value systems, where the main parties in the conflict are the globalist structures led by the USA, i.e., NATO, and Russia on the other side. This conflict is complex and is being fought on military, political, economic, informational, psychological and spiritual levels.
It is an obvious model through which the creation of a schism in Orthodoxy is carried out by registering state „proxy“ churches, which are then supported by the Patriarchate of Constantinople, behind which, according to published documents, is the American intelligence agency CIA.
The Orthodox world has become one of the leading forces fighting for traditional values, but there are allies in the fight against the suppression of religious principles from life among Catholics, Muslims, Jews, and even non-believers.
Thank you for your attention.