Representatives of pro-Russian Orthodox organizations held a massive religious procession on November 4 in the center of Kyiv.
According to Kommersant, the participants gathered to celebrate National Unity Day, which is celebrated in Russia, as well as to protest the statement made by Metropolitan Volodymyr (Slobodan) in support of European integration. According to the organizers, the signing of an association agreement with the EU would mean that in Ukraine “will live a thousand European Gypsies and blacks,” will be held “millions of marches of sodomites,” and will be set up schools for children, “who will be taught by homosexuals.”
On September 30, the heads of all the major churches and religious organizations in Ukraine issued a joint statement to the Ukrainian people in which they supported the current government’s desire to sign the Association Agreement with the EU. For this, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church-Moscow Patriarchate (UOC-MP) was criticized by members of pro-Russian organizations. It is they who organized the religious procession in the capital.
Participants of the procession – about 4,000 people – held Russian imperial flags, icons, and images of the last Russian Tsar Nicholas II. Two elderly women brought a portrait of Soviet Marshal Georgy Zhukov. There were also quite unexpected image: an elderly man had an “icon” with a picture of Grigori Rasputin in monastic attire.
The protesters moved to the building of the Kyiv Metropolitanate, where meetings are usually held by the Holy Synod of the UOC-MP, surrounded it, and began shouting such things as “No to Euro Sodomy.”
The participants of the procession are most concerned about sexual minorities. Indeed, the head of the organization National Council Ihor Druz said that “joining the EU will lead to an outpouring of all of its sins – sodomy, drug abuse, and euthanasia.”
“We are against all of this, and, in obedience to the will of the head of the Church Patriarch Kirill, we declare our desire to move closer to the Russian world,” said Mr. Druz.