The anti-war protest took place near the St. John the Baptist Cathedral of the Russian Orthodox Church in Washington, DC, where the annual Russian Bazaar festival was held on October 5-6.
Journalists from the Russian studio of the Voice of America talked to the protesters, but the police asked the activists and the film crew not to enter the church.
One of the protesters, Nataliia, who came to the United States from Lviv, told a Voice of America journalist that her husband was killed by Russians and emphasized that the Russian Orthodox Church supports the war.
“As we all know, the Russian Church blesses Russian soldiers and Russian troops to come and kill Ukrainians in Ukraine,” she said.
According to Nataliia, a priest of the ROC cathedral approached her and demanded to know what she was wearing. Her T-shirt depicts a theater in Mariupol where children were hiding, and Russian planes bombed the theater and killed those children.
According to another participant, Maryna, the ROC faithful reacted differently to their action: some negatively, some positively, and many did not understand how the ROC was involved in Russian aggression.
“They do not see the logical connection: the Russian country - the Russian Church - the head of the Russian Church, as well as the head of the Russian Church abroad,” Maryna said. According to her, the visitors of the 'bazaar' did not understand what the protesters wanted, but they did not try to hear the voices of Ukrainians.
The protesters turned on the siren that blares in Ukraine in case of an air raid alert. This outraged the ROC faithful, who said this sound scared their children. Nataliia then explained that Ukrainian children hear these sirens every day and that Russian missiles kill Ukrainian children almost every day.
She also emphasized that it is very important “for these people to understand that first comes Russian culture with Pushkin, Lermontov, Turgenev, with ballet and songs; then comes Putin with tanks and kills people.”
The leadership of the ROC community itself pretended that nothing was happening. “There is a festive, cheerful atmosphere at the bazaar, charging everyone with positive energy,” commented parish elder Maksim Agapov.