By Nick Stamatakis
As the United States announced it could no longer supply Ukraine with weapons, and as Russian forces poured westward with the slow inevitability of lava, President Zelensky signed a decree that shocked even some of his supporters: he stripped Metropolitan Onufriy, the Primate of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate), of his Ukrainian citizenship.
While the frontlines burned and the nation faced existential peril, Zelensky’s attention turned not toward defense or diplomacy, but toward an aging monk and spiritual leader. This act—quiet, symbolic, and targeted—revealed more than a national security policy. It exposed the deeper ideological anatomy of this war: a clash of civilizations, in which Eastern Orthodoxy itself has become the chief target.
The War Beneath the War
Since the beginning, Western strategists and ideologues have framed Ukraine not just as a buffer state but as a theater for civilizational confrontation between Western liberal modernity and the traditionalist, Orthodox world of Eurasia. The rhetoric of democracy, LGBTQ rights, and “decolonization” has been grafted onto a military conflict, rebranding war as a moral crusade.
Within this framework, Eastern Orthodoxy—especially its Russian and Slavic expressions—has been cast as a threat: patriarchal, hierarchical, and too rooted in memory. The Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate), though autonomous and deeply Ukrainian in identity, has become a scapegoat for these broader anxieties.
And no figure more clearly represents that ancient spiritual continuity than Metropolitan Onufriy.
Onufriy: A Holy Man, Not a Politician
To those who know him—not from headlines, but from pilgrimage, confession, or personal encounter—Metropolitan Onufriy is not a political actor. He is a holy man, revered even by those outside his jurisdiction. Born into monasticism, ascetic in life, gentle in speech, and utterly devoid of ambition, Onufriy has lived a life rooted in prayer and service.
Among Orthodox clergy across the world, and among countless faithful in Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia, Serbia, and Russia, he is recognized as a man of God, not a tool of any state.
That such a man would be branded a threat, denied citizenship, and effectively exiled from the national body, reveals a chilling truth: this is no longer about security—it is about purging sacred memory from public life.
Erasing a Tradition by Erasing a Man
The government claims Onufriy secretly held Russian citizenship—an accusation built on unverified documents and political timing. No court has ruled. No transparent evidence has been presented. And the Metropolitan himself, through the UOC-MP, has denied holding any passport but a Ukrainian one.
But the deeper issue isn’t the passport. It is that Onufriy refused to renounce the ancient canonical ties of the Church. He refused to politicize the altar. He refused to allow the state to dictate what the Church must be. For that refusal, he has been punished—not only as a citizen, but as a symbol of resistance to the ideological colonization of Ukraine’s religious soul.
A War on the Soul of Ukraine
As military defenses falter and Western support thins, Zelensky’s focus has turned inward—toward religious identity, historical memory, and spiritual authority. In this ideological war, even saints are not safe. The revocation of Onufriy’s citizenship was not an isolated act. It is part of a wider effort to dismantle Orthodox institutions, suppress clerical independence, and erase any trace of spiritual continuity that resists the West’s civilizational blueprint.
Conclusion: The Real Front Line
In exiling a man like Onufriy, Zelensky did not isolate a traitor—he persecuted a holy elder whose presence challenged the false idols of modern political ideology. And in doing so, he made clear what this war is becoming: not merely a struggle for land, but a cultural and spiritual scorched earth campaign against Eastern Christian civilization itself.
The real front is not only in the trenches, but in the monasteries, in the parish halls, and in the hearts of those who still remember what it means to live not by lies.
July 3, 2025, n.stamatakis@aol.com www.helleniscope.com
DISCLAIMER: The views and statements expressed in this article constitute constitutionally protected opinions of this author.
I am so sorry to read this. Let us pray for this holy elder.
“If the world hates you, you know that it hated Me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the worldl- would love its own. Yet because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.(John 15)
May our Lord God save and preserve the saintly Met. Onufriy, and the faithful of the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church!
It is my sacred honor to remember His Beatitude, Metropolitan Onuphry, EIS POLA ETI, DESPOTA!, and all the clergy and laity of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, in the Proskomide of every Holy Liturgy that I am blessed to serve. May our Most Beloved PANAGHIA – the Mother of our Life, the Mother of our Church and the Mother of each one of us – keep Metropolitan Onuphry and ALL the clergy and laity under his Omorphorion, under her constant Holy Protection!
Fr. Demetrios Carellas
You are not the only one, Father
Zelensky needs to be tarred and feathered!
Leave Met Onufriy alone, he is a living saint! 🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻 Many prayers for him and his community of faithful. We love you and stand by you! ❤️Amen….
This is disgrace what the Ukrainians are doing, all efforts are to destroy Christianity by their barbaric acts not only towards Greek Orthodox Churches and Priests but any other religions except Jewish religion. The world don’t realize how barbaric nation is Ukraine from history. Look what they did to the Polish people in Volhynia which is kept low without mentioning. Now in Poland you see many squares of the cities named in the respect of some Ukrainian soldiers not for Poles who died, this is outrageous what’s going on. Ungrateful Zelensky goes round and round asking for money and weapons to destroy other religions, the world should stop helping this criminal and his tugs.