It was the first time when the UOC-MP used people with no understanding of church life against Bartholomew, - expert opinion

"The Russian Orthodox Church, through the UOC-MP, tried to invest as much as possible in discrediting the visit, searched (unsuccessfully) for lobbyists in power, created initiative groups like laypeople who are not satisfied with the visit. And who on the day of Bartholomew's meeting with the speaker of the Verkhovna Rada brought people under the parliament. This was not the first public action of the UOC-MP, but the first in which people who have no idea about church life or the subject of protest were used," the expert wrote, summing up the results of the visit of the Ecumenical Patriarch to Ukraine.

According to her, two-hour dialogues with the participants give grounds to assert that most of them were attracted by traditional incentives for Ukrainian parties. At the same time, the priests of the UOC-MP present at the rally, Lana Samokhvalova notes, "were clearly shy about their participation, and people who held protest banners in Greek and English did not know what was written on them."

"If a few years ago there was a concept of “professional Russians” who master the federal budgets of the Russian Federation to support “Russian compatriots”, now there is a concept of "professional Orthodox” who go out on the church theme in the interests of the Moscow Patriarchate," Lana Samokhvalova sums up.