Crimean Metropolitan Tikhon of the Russian Orthodox Church explained to students why it is necessary to kill Ukrainians
This was reported by Voice of Crimea.
The occupation “metropolitan” told the young audience that the Russians “turned out to be weak enough to allow themselves to be drawn into a civil confrontation [meaning the Russian war against Ukraine], to come to murders in the interests of third parties.”
“We are experiencing one of the most terrible tragedies: the behind-the-scenes forces controlling many destinies have pitted one part of one people against another [meaning Russians and Ukrainians]. We are contemporaries of this great tragedy. We were forced to wage this war,” Tikhon said, deliberately ignoring the fact that Vladimir Putin is the sole initiator of Russia's unprovoked military aggression against Ukraine. Russian dictator ‘justified’ the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 in advance with his article about the ‘historical unity of Russians and Ukrainians’ and later repeatedly made statements that he was ‘left with no choice’ but to wage war against Ukraine.
At the same time, according to the Crimean “metropolitan”, Russians “do not have the hatred inherent in Ukrainians.”
“I speak to our soldiers and officers, and I have never heard them say words of hatred towards Ukrainians. Unfortunately, hatred is practically pouring down on us in communication, on television, and on the Internet, and we see it all,” he complained.
Tikhon went on to make it clear that he considers the existence of the Ukrainian state and Ukrainians an evil that must be fought exclusively by decisive violent means and the Russian war against Ukraine to be “the defense of the homeland.”
“Sometimes, if you do not defend your land, it will be reduced to dust. There is a legend that Christianity preaches non-resistance to evil by violence. This, however, is not true. If you see someone coming to kill, rape, rob your friend, girlfriend, or a person next to you, you must use force to stop the wrongdoer. There are things that have no solutions other than tragic ones,” he said.
At the same time, the Russian Orthodox Church bishop assigned to the occupied Crimea emphasized that one of the tasks of the Kremlin regime is to “protect” the residents of the free territory of Ukraine who remain united with the Moscow Patriarchate.
“There is a significant part of the Orthodox [MP] in Ukraine, and they remain Orthodox. They are going through very difficult times. We see that the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra is being closed, and the Orthodox loyal to the proper, traditional, canonical field of Orthodoxy are being persecuted. We are constantly being pulled away from the understanding of Orthodoxy that we have inherited from the time of the apostles and Jesus Christ. This unshakable doctrine is passed down from generation to generation, and it can only be verified by one's own life,” Tikhon said, once again demonstrating his historical and theological ignorance.
