President Zelensky has sent his men to raid and take over churches.
He has suspended elections.
And he is sending Christian men en masse to their deaths.
The last time this happened in that region it was call Bolshevism.
Today it’s being rebranded as “fighting democracy”.
Candace Owens
Ukraine – Stop Persecuting Orthodox Christians by Robert B. Charles
Just when you thought the Ukraine situation could not get worse, it may. Ukraine’s government, with Zelensky’s support, is taking action that risks a Christian-on-Christian Civil War. This must stop, and the US Government can insist it stops by conditioning further aid to Ukraine on Ukraine promptly returning to the Christian Orthodox Churches seized properties. This includes the ancient monastery and Orthodox Christian Cathedral at the “Kiev Caves Lavra,” known as “the heart of Ukrainian and Russian Orthodoxy.”
Fear is now afoot in Ukraine – from a source other than Russia, the Ukrainian Government itself, which appears to be pursuing the Orthodox Christian church, long dissociated from Moscow, as an enemy of the state. The goal appears a strategy of soft ethnic cleansing, the latest chapter of the suspension of a lease long held by the Ukrainian Orthodox Church on the Lavra Cathedral on January 1, 2023.
To be clear, Ukrainian executive and legislative actions – with Zelensky’s knowledge – violate every principle of freedom of religion, and should be called out. They are reportedly “intended to make the seizure of churches belonging to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which has already been going on unpunished for decades, something entirely legal and constitutional,” which cannot stand.
Imagine for a moment a future US Administration, hostile to one or another type of Christianity, deciding that the National Cathedral in Washington DC, or St. John the Divine or St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York, was not sufficiently subservient to the Administration’s progressive agenda – and so seized the cathedral, refusing to grant a lease dating to Cathedral’s origin.
The American people would not have it. For the same reason, we cannot sit by and let this happen in Ukraine. We cannot be party to oppression of ethnic Orthodox Ukrainian and Russian Christians, particularly Orthodox Christians in Ukraine, a center of Christianity’s founding.
For Ukraine’s government to take over an ancient Orthodox cathedral and monastery, placing peaceful, non-political, monastic members in fear, is beyond the pale. America should never be in the business of assisting a government in the oppression of a religious minority, let alone a Christian community with centuries of history dedicated to caring for, protecting, and praying in a cathedral and monastery.
The fact that this is happening, with no clear statement of disapproval and conditioning of future support to Ukraine by the Biden Administration, is unconscionable. Ukraine is at war with Putin’s military, not Christians in Ukraine, especially not monastics, who serve peace and pray for it.
As Assistant Secretary of State to Colin Powell, I traveled to many countries in which a particular Christian minority was oppressed by an ethnic, hostile, indifferent foreign government. The foreign government often permitted oppression by others, taking a hands off view. Sometimes the government directly interceded. In each case, we vehemently, forcefully objected. Religious persecution is disallowed by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, United Nations declarations, the US Constitution, and fundamental texts on natural law.
In Laos, my message to the Communist prime minister and attorney general – delivered in person – was that America expected Christians not to be persecuted. Speaking with Kosovar Albanian Muslim officials, my message was the same. Burning monasteries and attacking Christian churches and enclaves in 2004 was not permissible. I walked through their rubble.
When Egypt’s former government targeted Christian Copts, or when Sunni, Shite, or Kurdish leaders targeted each other’s populations in Iraq, or when any government persecutes a religious minority for its faith, including Yazidis, Jews, Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Uyghurs, America has an obligation to step up, and if we can, stop it. We cannot become complicit.
While tempers run hot in Ukraine and Putin’s external threat remains ugly, heartbreaking, and without modern precedent, Ukraine cannot now turn on the Orthodox Christians within its own borders, and oppress them by seizure of age-old churches – then expect more US support.
Americans cannot allow this to happen. The Biden Administration and those in Congress who care should promptly intercede, making clear Ukraine cannot devolve into a Christian-on-Christian Civil War, cannot seize Ukrainian and Russian Orthodox churches, and get US support.
Oppression of a religious minority, ancient or modern, large or small, affiliated with an adversary or otherwise, is impermissible – morally and by international law. The Chinese Communist domination, misappropriation of property and reeducation of religious minorities, Christian or Uyghur, is wrong. US misappropriation of property and internment of Japanese Americans in WWII was similarly wrong – and we paid a high price for that mistake.
Equally wrong now is Ukraine’s decision, directly and through affiliates, to target, persecute, and misappropriate property from the Ukrainian and Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine. If Ukraine – and President Zelensky – want continued US support, seizing the Orthodox Christian cathedral and monastery – needs to be swiftly reversed.
America cannot be party to acts which seed a Civil War, persecute a prominent religious minority, or feed Putin’s false narrative that Orthodox Christians are targeted by Ukraine. Simply put, if they are not being targeted, their property should not be seized, lease not ended.
The sooner we stand up, speak up, and reverse this act and ones like it, conditioning further assistance on fair, legal, and moral treatment of Orthodox Christians in Ukraine – including their properties – the sooner Putin will understand he cannot divide Ukrainians, or Americans from Ukraine. A civil war inside Ukraine, Christian-on-Christians, would be folly – an epic tragedy. We can stop it – so let us do that.
Robert Charles is a former Assistant Secretary of State under Colin Powell, former Reagan and Bush 41 White House staffer, attorney, and naval intelligence officer (USNR). He wrote “Narcotics and Terrorism” (2003), “Eagles and Evergreens” (2018), and is National Spokesman for AMAC.