Kiev, February 10, 2025
Photo: spzh.eu
In May 2019, two months after Vladimir Zelensky was elected President of Ukraine, a group of Ukrainian individuals and organizations published a statement threatening political instability if the head of state were to cross any of their “red lines” in terms of security, foreign policy, economics, national identity, media and information policy, and government functioning.
The statement, published by the Ukraine Crisis Media Center, is signed by nearly 70 individual public figures, media organizations, NGOs/public organizations, think thanks/research institutes, educational institutions, charitable foundations, and cultural organizations, many of whom are known to have been funded by USAID and other Western sources.
Under “National Identity,” the signatories warn of “implementing any actions aimed at undermining or discrediting the Orthodox Church of Ukraine or supporting the Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine [the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church].”
The signees write that they were “deeply concerned about the first executive decisions taken by the newly-elected President.”
President Zelensky easily defeated incumbent Petro Poroshenko in 2019, with a major part of his platform being his promise not to interfere in religious affairs. Under Poroshenko, the Ukrainian government teamed up with the U.S. government and the Patriarchate of Constantinople to create the schismatic “Orthodox Church of Ukraine,” which exists to replace the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church under His Beatitude Metropolitan Onuphry of Kiev and All Ukraine. A wave of violence swept the country, as the godless schismatics physically seized Orthodox church buildings.
But under Zelensky, the situation for the canonical Church markedly improved, though organizations, such as the signatories of the aforementioned statement, saw the peaceful existence of the UOC as a threat to Ukraine. Over the years of his administration, and especially since the start of the war in February 2022, President Zelensky’s attitude towards the Ukrainians of the Kiev-centered UOC has considerably soured, aligning with the demands of the 2019 statement, and the Church now faces the threat of an outright ban.
Among the signees is Detector Media, “a watchdog of Ukrainian mass media,” which a USAID publication from May 2022 identified as a USAID partner.
Detector Media is now warning that the USAID funding freeze under President Trump “could erase three decades of progress and undermine Ukraine’s statehood, democratic values, and pro-Western orientation.”
According to Detector Media head Natalia Lygachova, more than 50% of Ukrainian media outlets that receive foreign grants depend on U.S. funding. “I can say that this is really very important not only for Ukraine but also for the United States. Because it is independent media that ensure, first of all, the existence of democracy and pluralism in Ukraine,” Lygachova said.
Another signatory, the Ukrainian Prism Foreign Policy Council, lists among its partners the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine.
Another, the Internews Ukraine NGO, is funded by George Soros’ Open Society Foundation, as well as the National Democratic Institute, which was in turn supported by USAID and the U.S. Department of State.
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Source: Orthodox Christianity
