Metropolitan of Kyiv and All Ukraine, Primate of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, Epiphanius, drew attention to one supposedly untouchable enemy organization that exists in our country.
The head of the OCU said this in an interview with "Apostrof TV" .
Epiphanius shared his feelings at the time when they saw Russian priests consecrating weapons, in effect blessing the killing of Ukrainians.
"It was not a surprise to us, we talked about it. The Ukrainian Church has been fighting for over 30 years, and we understood these challenges. We talked about the danger of the existence of the Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine, which is Putin's outpost in Ukraine. We have now severed all relations with the aggressor, but there remains one supposedly untouchable organization - the Russian Orthodox Church, which shouts to the whole world that there is supposedly persecution here. But everyone is equal before the law," the metropolitan emphasized.
He also noted that the Russian Church in Ukraine has joined Putin's struggle against Ukraine. After all, in the temporarily occupied territories, almost all clergymen supported the invaders.
"And we see in the fourth year of the war that many clergymen are still being exposed who are helping the enemy. This shows that the Russian Church is an indispensable part of the Russian state, it is the Department of Religious Affairs that is openly helping Putin. Before the full-scale invasion, they were still somehow masked, but now they are doing everything openly. This is done by the head of the ROC, Kirill Gundyaev, who is a co-author of this destructive ideology of the "Russian world". It was he who encouraged Putin to put this ideology into practice: that there is no Ukrainian state, there is no Ukrainian people. They have been instilling these narratives in Ukrainians for 30 years. This ideology has brought destruction, tears, pain and death to our peaceful home," Epiphanius explained.
Meanwhile, he clarified whether forgiveness is even appropriate for our generation.
"As for forgiving the enemy. We are Christians. But for our generation it is a difficult process. We see how children die every day. The question arises: what is the expediency of such things? The world has developed certain rules of warfare, which the Russian Federation does not pay attention to. They use weapons to kill peaceful people. Putin has a goal - to destroy the Ukrainian state, and he does not abandon it," the head of the OCU stated.
It is worth recalling that the draft law "On the Protection of the Constitutional Order in the Sphere of Activities of Religious Organizations" adopted by the Verkhovna Rada began to be implemented 6 months after it came into force in August 2024.