PHOTO: Metropolitan Onufriy, leader of the UOC, a true Holy Man… Last month, the Ukro-Nazis took away his passport…
By Helleniscope’s Editorial Team
Moscow has made clear that any peace settlement with Ukraine must include recognition of the Russian language and protection for the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) under Metropolitan Onufriy. These are issues of human rights widely practice in the West – while Zelensky, himself is a native Russian speaker! If Kiev keeps on this line, the human rights issue will prove a disaster for Western policy, an amalgam of hypocrisy and duplicity!
Moscow’s Demands
Russia has placed the protection of the Russian language and the Ukrainian Orthodox Church under Metropolitan Onufriy at the center of its peace proposals. At the August 15 Alaska summit between President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Donald Trump, the Kremlin reiterated that any settlement must include:
Official recognition of the Russian language in Ukraine. Although President Zelensky’s own native language is Russian, Kyiv has increasingly limited its official use in public life.
Complete protection and freedom of operation for the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC), which remains canonically tied to the Moscow Patriarchate.
These demands accompany Russia’s broader conditions on territory and NATO, but language and religion have been singled out as “red lines” in every draft proposal.
Ukraine’s Response
Kyiv has rejected Moscow’s conditions as unacceptable:
Language: Officials emphasize that Ukrainian will remain the sole state language. Efforts to enshrine Russian alongside it are seen as undermining national identity. We are wondering what the E.U. and the U.S. have to say about it. This human rights issue has the potential to unmask the duplicity and hypocrisy of Western policy!!
Church: The Ukrainian Council of Churches and Religious Organizations (UCCRO) denounced Russia’s push for special status for the UOC as a manipulative attempt to maintain influence under religious cover. But the faithful have a different opinion and more than 70% belong to the UOC – despite all the suppressive acts.
Metropolitan Onufriy and the UOC
Metropolitan Onufriy, head of the UOC, has become a flashpoint in the dispute.
Refusal to Break Ties: In July, Ukraine’s State Service for Ethnic Policy ordered the UOC to sever ties with the Moscow Patriarchate formally. Onufriy rejected the demand, accusing the state of overreach.
Loss of Citizenship: On July 2, President Volodymyr Zelensky revoked Onufriy’s Ukrainian citizenship, citing continued loyalty to Moscow.
Legal Pressure: Under a 2024 law, religious bodies tied to aggressor states can be banned. The UOC remains under review, with evidence of ongoing structural links to Moscow.
- Below, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov spells out explicitly (after minute 3) the Russian demands on these issues and demands the rescission of laws against the Russian language and the Orthodox Church UOC.
Broader Implications
Russia’s insistence on cultural and religious guarantees underscores that its goals extend beyond territory. For Moscow, the recognition of the Russian language and the protection of the UOC represent a symbolic victory and a tool of long-term influence. For Ukraine, conceding on either front would threaten sovereignty and undo years of nation-building since 2014. But their resistance is futile: Ukraine will either recognize basic human rights, or the Russian Army will impose its will.
As for Patriarch Bartholomew, he is in a pitiful political position: he invested all the capital in his hands in promoting the will of the Western dark forces, and now he will pay the price at the end of his tenure… Proving correct all those of us who explained that he proved to be the worst Patriarch in modern history, worse even than Meletios Metaxakis!!
August 19, 2025, n.stamatakis@aol.com www.helleniscope.com
DISCLAIMER: The views and statements expressed in this article constitute constitutionally protected opinions of this author.
Why doesn’t Trump want Spanish to be an official language of the U.S ? With 60 million Spanish language speakers in the U.S., our country has the second largest Spanish speaking population in the world, with Mexico being first. There’s more Spanish language speakers in the U.S. than there is people in Ukraine.
I would surmise that Trump doesn’t want Spanish to be an official language for the same reason that Zelensky doesn’t want Russian to be an official language of Ukraine.
Joseph, how many times should I comment on your twisted “litigious” argumentation? Please stop it!! Ukraine did not exist as a “nation” a century ago and Ukrainian was NOT a language but mostly a dialect of the Russian main language. Please stop comparing apples and oranges. In the “democracy” of Ukraine you go to jail if you use Russian in a grocery store. I am getting tired of your mentality and this is the last time I will post a comment by you that contains this twisted logic.
Joseph, you are consistently entertaining.
There is indeed a stark difference between an “apple” and an “orange”. A visit to a supermarket once in a while may help reinforce this concept…
Differences between the US (no matter which party is in control) and the Ukraine:
– Zelensky has officially banned the public use of a language via law (with penalties). No such thing has occurred in the United States, but most automated telephony systems still openly say “para servicio en Espanol, oprima dos (or nueve)”, even on official government call-in numbers. Meanwhile, Spanish media and entertainment broadcasting is thriving, and not “banned” in the US.
– Zelensky has banned an entire Church via law. Confiscations of properties, including the Kiev Caves that were always Russian have occurred. That uncivilized behavior does not reflect reality in the United States, with the exception of localized attempts to shut down Churches during Covid until the Supreme court weighed in on that.
– Zelensky has imprisoned metropolitans and his followers even killed Russian-speaking leaders. We have not seen Hispanic religious or community leaders be prosecuted by local or federal government, & imprisoned in the United States just for being Hispanic religious or community leaders.
– In WW2, ancestors of the Zelensky regime hated Stalin so much that they eagerly joined the Nazis to kill Russians and Russian speakers (not differentiating between “people & tyrrant”). {The Croats acted similarly against the Serbs, as did the Bulgarians against the Greeks, by the way}… “Bad blood” remained on ice during the Cold War, but hostilities were slowly reignited by Western interests over the last 30 years, to culminate into the conflict that we see now, which actually started with the coup of 2014, despite what the skewed media have been regurgitating in the past few days. In contrast, the United States openly allows “Cinco de Mayo” and other fiestas to occur all over the country despite events such as “The Alamo” having occurred in history. The United States even allows individuals to paste Mexican and other flags on their bumper stickers without fear of attack or arrest, etc…big difference, isn’t it?
Similarities between the US and Ukraine:
– Spanish was spoken in the United States long before English (Florida and the Southwest since the 1500’s, vs. Jamestown over 100 years later)
– Russian was spoken in the Ukrainian lands long before the current “Germano-Polish-Russian” dialect that became dominant in the western portions of that land (after the Uniate invasions of the 1600-1700s)…
I generally agree with the above. However, Stalin was evil. The Russian and Ukrainian and other people of the Soviet Union fought to rid the homeland of the Nazi menace. But I suggest reading Solzhenitsyn. He lived through all this. The fact that so many former Red Army people signed up to fight for Hitler even when they knew he was losing the war, indicates they were well aware of Stalin’s evil. Stalin reopened some churches because he saw faithful people going over to the Germans. I’m not talking about the extremists, mostly Western Ukrainian Uniates, who were and are more anti-Russian than anti-communist.
I agree with Moscow. Also give Russia back their $300 billion and drop the sanctions. Amen!
There are Ukranian oblasts that the Russia military has only partial control of. In the negotiations, these areas could be returned to Ukraine. There are many Russian speakers in these oblasts in question. It would be a self-defeating move if Ukraine does not recognize the rights of Russian speakers in those places. In which case, Russia would not return those areas back to Ukraine for fear that Ukraine would continue the persecution of Russian speakers. Ukraine needs to stop acting on bad advice.
When it comes to Bartholomew, whether or not the goal in Ukraine is achieved by Russian military victory or capitulation on behalf of Ukraine, he looses either way.
Since his granting of “autocephaly” to the OCU, has his stature and the role of the EP in the Orthodox world strengthened?
No
Quite the opposite. There is a palpable feeling within worldwide Orthodox that the bishop in Istanbul indeed has no clothes. No other Churches followed him in recognizing the OCU, other than the Greek Churches (and even then it was/is very divisive).
He has not only diminished his personal role in the Orthodox Church, but he’s greatly diminished the role of the Ecumenical Patriarchate.
Dude to his actions, IMHO, what we are seeing in the Orthodox Church as a whole is the following:
1) Moving away from the papal pretensions of the EP as a whole
2) The moving away from the EP in general as First Among Equals.
I believe the Orthodox world is realizing we no longer need a bishop in a Muslim city, in a Muslim country who has almost no flock, to act as the arbiter in the Church
If any Church deserves to be the Mother Church of Orthodoxy it’s Jerusalem. There are a few patriarchs/bishops who have alluded to that over the past couple of years.
In my personal opinion: We are seeing the death throes of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, if not literally than figuratively.
The cruel irony in Bartholomew choosing to side with the demonic West against Russia is that it is solely Russia who could have preserved their status in Orthodoxy.