However, close cooperation with professional Rashist propagandists who, in turn, are friends of the international terrorist, the Chechen tsar Ramzan Kadyrov, and who serve his “government,” is already a sign of extreme destructiveness, a moral abyss, and a security threat. One would think that such facts should be impossible in Ukraine. But they are a bitter reality even now, at the end of the 12th year of the war.

To begin with, let us quote the words of the primate of the UOC–MP, Metropolitan Onufrii Berezovskyi, addressed to Metropolitan Luka Kovalenko on 16 November 2025: “Your ministry has become a source of spiritual strengthening for many: through your care, prudence, and fatherly attention, the faithful find consolation, spiritual inspiration, and hope…” Let us record this as an indicator of their shared mindset and common cause—we will return to Luka a bit later.

For now, let us focus on the blonde woman in the photographs. This is Dragana Trifković.

Here she appears as a jury member for the “Golden Pen” contest in Chechnya in December 2025. Dragana enthusiastically told the Kadyrov government newspaper Vesti Chechenskoi Respubliki that she was delighted by such an honor, as she put it. She was even awarded a certificate of appreciation from the “Ministry of National Policy, External Relations, and Information” of Kadyrov’s fiefdom. Noteworthy is the very headline of the announcement about the contest on the website of the Center headed by Dragana: “Truth and Professionalism in Focus: The XII ‘Golden Pen’ Awarded in Grozny.” While this is supposedly a competition for journalists, one of the diplomas was received by Ramzan Kadyrov himself…

Dragana is a total Rashist from Serbia. In Russia, she is a frequent guest and an active worker in the field of propaganda. Consider her words spoken in November 2025 at a conference in occupied Crimea, where she claimed that the slogan “Glory to Ukraine” is a direct continuation of “fascist symbolism.” There is also a video of her interview with the TV channel Zvezda (the main channel of the Russian army), where she asserted that the majority of Serbs approve of Russia’s military actions against Ukraine and aligned herself with the thesis: “This is a war against the West.”

Metropolitan Luka Kovalenko actively cooperates with Dragana Trifković, participating in events organized by the Center for Geostrategic Studies, which she heads.

For example, on 4 December 2025, Dragana moderated a conference, and immediately after her own report, Luka’s presentation was delivered. Before it was read out, Dragana said that His Eminence usually joins their forums via video link, but this time her colleague would read his report. Luka’s portrait appeared on the screen, and his report was delivered. On the official website and Facebook page of his diocese, Luka also reported in detail that he had participated in a conference under the auspices of the Center, whose general director is Dragana, and published the full text of his presentation. The official website of the Russian Orthodox Church also reported on the conference and Luka’s participation.

With the Rashist Trifković, Metropolitan Luka has close cooperation and ideological affinity. He participated with her in a conference in Bulgaria in 2024, and in another conference she organized in Belgrade in March 2025.

At all these conferences, he delivered his reports. In none of them did he speak of Russia as a military aggressor destroying Ukraine. Instead, there was no shortage of criticism of the Phanar and the Vatican, as well as calls (for example, at the December conference) to move the center of world Orthodoxy to the Jerusalem Church, whose head calls Putin a trump card for Orthodoxy and accepts orders from him.

In his report, Luka spoke of Dragana Trifković’s Center as one of those that should be entrusted with (quote) “the creation of an additional analytical center to monitor ecumenical and geopolitical threats (based on existing structures, for example, at the Center for Geostrategic Studies in Belgrade).”Thus, Luka unequivocally makes it clear that the Center led by a servile admirer and international propagandist of Kadyrov and Putin is, for him, an archbishop from Ukraine — an authority, despite the war Russia is waging against his country.

And one more very telling point: in 2024, Luka also participated in a conference in Bulgaria where Trifković spoke. Another speaker was Maksym Kostenko, former deputy head of the Synodal Department of the UOC for Youth Affairs. As far as I understand, this Ukrainian citizen now lives in Russia or another country and supports Russia. Here are words from his report: “The current persecution of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church is not a consequence of the present military conflict between Ukraine and Russia. This process has much deeper roots. Its starting point should be considered the centuries-long attempts of Russia’s geopolitical opponents to separate territories from it, turning their inhabitants into a force ready to ideologically and persistently wage war against the Russian state. Poland, Austria-Hungary, and Germany once followed this path. At the same time, the key role was always assigned to changing the spiritual code of the Russian people, since the Orthodox faith was the most important element in preserving the unity of Rus’. In this regard, Russia’s opponents have always been interested in Catholicism in its territories and in establishing the dominance of the Catholic world there. The modern persecution of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church should be viewed through the prism of the implementation of this strategy.”

There is no need to comment on how deeply Rashist and manipulative these words are. This is a typical Russian justification for the war. Incidentally, it often appears in the theses of Serbian Rashists as well. For example, at another conference in which Luka Kovalenko participated with a report in 2024, another speaker, Zoran Čvorović (presented in the program as a law professor), stated outright: “The conflict in Ukraine has, among other things, a significant church dimension, which is primordial [i.e., determining] in relation to the armed one, since it concerns the sphere of identity conversion of the Ukrainian population, which preceded the armed phase of this conflict and made it possible.” That is, this “intellectual,” in essence, openly says: Russia resorted to aggression against Ukraine because Ukraine, through a significant part of its people, dared to say “no” to Muscovite subordination in the spiritual sphere.

We understand this as a horrific crime by Russia. But people like Dragana Trifković, the traitor Maksym Kostenko, and Zoran Čvorović perceive it as supposedly “correct” actions. This position is also held, as is well known, by the Serbian Patriarch Porfirije: Putin, in his words, is a “guardian of Christian values.” In the Kremlin in April 2025, he personally encouraged Putin to do what depended on him on the path to “victory,” and God, supposedly, would guide him. What a blasphemous manipulation!

Notably, the same conference in Bulgaria also featured another international apologist of Rashism — Archbishop Theodosios of Sebastia from the Jerusalem Patriarchate. He actively spreads the narrative that Moscow Patriarch Kirill Gundyaev is “for peace,” but that “his spiritual duty as Patriarch of Moscow is to defend his country and his Fatherland, to condemn Western conspiracies and projects directed against Russia”… “We perceive provocations against the Russian Orthodox Church as provocations against the entire Orthodox Church.” As we see, despite numerous facts of the glorification of the Russian army in Kirill’s sermons and statements, despite his doctrine of “washing away sins with blood” in this war, and despite proclaiming the war “holy,” Theodosios blasphemously declares the exposure of Kirill in this criminal activity to be an attack on Orthodoxy as such.

And Luka is not embarrassed to participate in such gatherings, in the company — and most likely in ideological solidarity — with such odious figures. His report at the Bulgarian conference, once again, did NOT focus on drawing attention to Russia’s crimes in Ukraine, including in his own city of Zaporizhzhia. Instead, it concerned (attention!) the party “European Solidarity” and Petro Poroshenko, and how, supposedly, they are destructive to “canonical Orthodoxy”…

Mega-cynicism, isn’t it?

And yet such a person, dangerous to Ukraine’s security, even now, in December 2025, at the end of the fourth year of the full-scale war, continues to actively influence the consciousness of Ukrainian citizens, meeting, in particular, with young people, having the opportunity to speak publicly (both physically and online), to travel around the country, and to be honored at ceremonial academic events marking anniversaries. All this is evidenced by the abundant news feed of the Zaporizhzhia diocese of the UOC…

Can Ukraine as a state afford the “luxury” of the public activity of such individuals? Moreover, Luka is only one of many functionaries of the Moscow Patriarchate in Ukraine who systematically carry out such destructive activities.

And the primate of the “U”OC calls Luka “a guide of God’s people, the helmsman of the church ship, who unceasingly fulfills his archpastoral mission with gentleness and wisdom, with zeal for prayer and fidelity to Christ’s Truth, bearing witness to love for God and people not only in word, but also in life.”

Do you, friends, have enough energy for sarcasm to perceive such grotesque absurdity in our country?!