On February 12 the organization National Council of Ukraine conducted a campaign in support of the Interior Ministry special unit Berkut, which protects the government district on Hrushevskoho Street from EuroMaidan protesters.
On February 12 the organization National Council of Ukraine conducted a campaign in support of the Interior Ministry special unit Berkut, which protects the government district on Hrushevskoho Street from EuroMaidan protesters.
Representatives of “political orthodoxy” brought archpriest Oleksiy Yefimov, the parish priest of a Moscow Patriarchate church in Vasylkiv, to Kyiv to hold a public prayer with the special forces, a correspondent from Religion in Ukraine reports.
Archpriest Oleksiy Yefimov led a prayer session and then delivered a sermon in which he instructed the Berkut to strictly abide by their commitments, including the official oath, otherwise “you will doom your soul to damnation.” The priest urged the Berkut to resist calls to switch to the side of the protesters, whom he compared with the Nazis and drew a parallel with the Great Patriotic War.
The priest also called on the Berkut to remember that they are standing in a holy place that the Lord Himself blessed. “Because here is Khreschatyk, and the holy Prince Volodymyr led his people from this Khreschatyk to their baptism, to clean them from pagan obscurantism, and to bring them the truth of Christ,” said Fr. Oleksiy.
“That is why these obscurantists chose this place for their Satanism,” the priest said about the protesters. “This is not the people of the nation! This is rubbish! The people look to you for protection, are relying on you.”