Patriarch Filaret’s appeal “On Accepting Ukraine as an Associate Member of the European Union” was sent to the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations the during a recent stay of Patriarch Filaret of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kyivan Patriarchate (UOC-KP) in Washington.
Patriarch was invited to participate in Senate hearings, which addressed issues concerning Ukraine, but due to the inability to change the schedule, the Primate of the Kyiv Patriarchate made an appeal, in which he said that the vast majority of Ukraine and, therefore, most believers of all religions, support Ukraine’s integration into the European Union as an associate member.
The head of the UOC-KP believes that the European Union must now accept Ukraine as it is, and as part of the association continue joint efforts of reform. The patriarch stresses that “any delay in making Ukraine as an associate member of the European Union will bring devastating consequences and will allow adverse forces to increase the pressure on our state to conquer and subordinate it, to impose a path toward a loss of sovereignty and independence, a path toward the resurgence of an autocratic empire and revival of the Cold War.”