Russian propagandist: ROC to be demonstratively and painfully beaten

In Russia, they believe that the Russian Orthodox Church and the ideology of the Russian world may disappear forever as the Kremlin's positions weaken. And it was triggered by the Tomos of autocephaly of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine.

This opinion, in particular, was expressed by Zakhar Priliepin, a Russian writer and propagandist who fought on the side of militants in Donbas, on his Facebook page, according to Channel 24.

Priliepil claims that after the Tomos was granted to Ukraine, the largest Russian Saint Panteleimon monastery on Mount Athos is supposedly transferred to the jurisdiction of the OCU. The author also claims that the Russian Orthodox Church will be deprive of the three of the five lavras, and Belarus, Moldova and other post-Soviet countries will take an example from Ukraine, seeking religious independence from Moscow.

“Soon the Russian Orthodox Church will crumble to the borders of the Russian Federation. But there it will hardly have any rest. Now, several parishes of the ex-Kyiv Patriarchate on the territory of the Russian Federation have automatically become parishes of the Constantinople Patriarchate. And then there were rumors that Istanbul will soon appoint a metropolitan. And the split will not be confined to Ukraine. The split will now emerge in Russia ... So, the Russian Orthodox Church will be painfully and demonstratively beaten,” he said.

At the same time, he assures that the image, political and economic losses for the entire population of Russia will ensue.

For his part, Prileipin has supported this position and has made public his vision of the inevitability of the collapse of the Russian Orthodox Church as an influential ideological entity.

“It will happen this way. When I began to talk about it, at once three “Orthodox” sites accused me of extremism, liberal Christianity, and incitement through the mouths of their authors. I do not know exactly what is going on inside the ROC. But I assume that selective work is being conducted and bargaining is going on there. “Just leave it here, and do not touch it there, and if you do this, then we will respond like that.” Such a strategy is doomed to failure. We are losing,” he noted.

In addition, the writer has shared the opinion of the deacon of ROC Ilya Maslov regarding the influence of the Tomos on the future of Orthodoxy in Russia. According to the clergyman, his Church will face the threat of a split already in 2019. At the same time, he believes that autocephaly in Ukraine will lead to an inevitable defeat of the Russian World ideology.

“Without the direct political will and the military intervention of Russia in defense of the persecuted believers of the canonical Ukrainian church (and the UOC, just to remind you, also covers the territory of Crimea and Donbas), the church “political technologists” in the Moscow Patriarchate and scandalous church bloggers will promote different criminal compromising material, the idea of ​​"letting go" of Ukraine, giving it "canonical autocephaly". If this happens, the ideas of the Russian World and Russian Spring will suffer a destructive and a crushing blow. The faithful and persecuted Orthodox of Ukraine will turn away from us, and the irreversible centrifugal processes will begin in the ROC itself,” Maslov said.