Conversation of radio “Radonezh” director Evgeny Nikiforov with the head of the press service of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate)
Vasily Semenovich, the year 2020 came, President Vladimir Zelensky made appeals designed to reconcile the country. Everyone is waiting for changes. However, the crimes of the previous authorities in the church and humanitarian spheres remain without the attention of law enforcement officials. Is everyone happy with everything?
“The authorities and the opposition believe that there are more topical issues. In Zelensky’s now-famous phone conversations with Trump, our president says Trump is an example for him. The President of the United States, having won the election, first reversed half of Obama’s decrees and many Obama-era laws, even international covenants. Zelensky has a hundred-fold more opportunities to correct the crimes of the Poroshenko regime, but he does not. Lies and Russophobia remain Ukraine’s state policy.”
But Zelensky himself was a victim of Russophobia, he was defamed as a puppet of Putin and the Kremlin?
“In such a capacity, curiously, he won against his opponent with a three-fold advantage. A Russian-speaking actor from a Jewish family (two in one – a nightmare for nationalists!) united Ukraine. However, today the president for some reason is trying to show that he is not Russian-speaking at all, that in the art of adherence to Poroshenko he is no worse than Poroshenko’s bots – in short, he pulls the trousers of Poroshenko up to his ears. Although Poroshenko himself looked silly in trousers.”
Why won’t the president dismantle this Russophobic system? He’s been in power for 9 months, right?
“After all, in ‘Servants of the People‘, except for Zelensky himself, who during the electoral campaign was proposed in Lvov to flee from Ukraine and at who an ocean of mud was flung, there are no other victims. They were not fighters against the “bloody regime”, they did not sit in Poroshenko’s prisons, they did not settle in exile, they were not thrown out of temples by militants. They are provincial conformists, servilists-creatives, grantees, lawyers, restaurateurs, photographers, and journalists who served oligarchs – large and small. They are not fighters. In addition, Poroshenko created a universal system of looting the people daily through prices and tariffs, and for the ruling class – such living conditions that ‘servants’ did not dream of. The latter is guaranteed by the former. That’s why nobody is dismantling anything. The people are impoverished, warming themselves by being close to the stove, and the government fills its pockets and gambols in Oman and Courchevel.”
Russophobia remains a taboo topic?
“Like the whole humanitarian sphere. Figuratively speaking, certain bastards/villains slandered a girl, defamed her, raped her, crippled her, broke her arms and legs, and then threw her out into a garbage can. Which, as a matter of fact, was what Poroshenko’s government did to the Russian language, culture, and history, which half of the population of Ukraine considers to be its own and native. In violation of the Constitution, Poroshenko’s proteges expelled the Russian language from everywhere they could: they banned it from institutions, schools, kindergartens, universities, cinema, and theatres. They closed Russian media – TV channels, press, social networks, websites, and for Ukrainian ones introduced anti-Russian language quotas. They were not even disturbed by the fact that the vast majority of Ukrainian soldiers killed in Donbass were Russian or Russian-speaking. They are allowed to die for Ukraine, but to listen to a song in their native language – nope! They’ll also get a fine. The father of peoples, Joseph Stalin, carrying out the total Ukrainisation of Ukraine, in the end left 30% of schools for Russian epigones. Poroshenko’s school law does not leave a single one!
Then a glorious knight of Ivanhoe, Vladimir the dragon slayer, appears and defeats the criminal gang in an election, deprives it of power, but tells the humiliated and defamed girl: wipe your eyes and nose, be silent, put up with it, do not rock the boat! We need unity!”
Is this a state position?
“Sadly! Moreover, it turned out to be in line with the position of the political defenders of the rights of ‘Russian and Russian-speaking citizens of Ukraine’, the ‘Opposition Platform – For Life!’ party, which became the second largest party in Parliament. Its leaders (Medvedchuk, Rabinovich) used the same rhapsody: we need to ‘stitch the country together’, so we have to put language, culture, history, and religion ‘to one side…’ But first it would be necessary to remove the girl from the garbage can, to treat her, to restore her rights, and then already to ‘stitch’ her with someone and ‘put her to one side’. The situation is tragic: Russian speakers are both in power and in opposition, and there is no one to protect and restore justice. So far a Nelson Mandela, who fearlessly defend the language rights of a culturally oppressed people, has not yet been discovered among them. Even in the Verkhovna Rada, where they were elected by Russian and Russian-speaking citizens, they are afraid to pronounce a word in Russian.”
Are they afraid to break the law or regulations?
“Regulations are violated daily and many times. They yell about it themselves. We are allowed to not execute criminal orders even in the army, during hostilities. The ban criminally violates the Constitution and the law. Russians and Russian speakers, who in 1991 constituted the majority of citizens, established an independent Ukrainian state, and they maintain it with their taxes. Why should they put a gag in their mouths? The Constitution guarantees the free use of the Russian language in all spheres. I wonder why Parubiy and Poroshenko did not adopt a rule of regulation obliging Russian-speaking defenders to walk through parliament on all fours. Today, the entire faction of the ‘Opposition Platform – For Life!’ would be moving in this direction, up to the decision of the Constitutional Court (i.e., a very long time), allowing them to stand up and not be afraid. Even the pharaohs also knew that slaves could only be forbidden what they could do. And in modern times, Michel Foucault has proved in his writings about governance that the compromisers bear the same responsibility for injustice as the government imposing it.”
Therefore the southeast saw Zelensky as the defender, and not “Opposition Platform – For Life”?
“I think for ‘Opposition Platform – For Life’ it was a shock. They, indeed, on their media resources exposed the crime of the Poroshenko regime, were the voice of the opposition, moulded a victory, but in the end Zelensky, who did not have such media, won. They became the second political force in the Rada, but with a very modest percentage – they have 50 deputies. This, of course, is a defeat. It is due to the fact that the parties of the southeast in the elections were unable to unite, accusing each other of playing along with Poroshenko, and testified that commercial interests for them were higher than the political goals they proclaimed. Secondly, in the leadership of the same ‘Opposition Platform’ there were some initiators and sponsors of Maidan, which the southeast considers to be the beginning of the catastrophe that befell Ukraine. Thirdly, they were even more cowardly than their ‘precursors’, who for 30 years parasitised on the topic of defending the Russian language. Kuchma and Yanukovych won via the slogan ‘Russian is the second state language’.”
It was recorded in their programs?
“Quite right. After the Orange Revolution, Kravchuk presented the party ‘Ne Tak!’ with the same slogan. Even Yushchenko declared something close in his election ‘Ten Steps’. But they positioned themselves and won as national leaders, and the current defenders declare themselves as ‘representatives of the interests of the Russian and Russian-speaking population of Ukraine’. At the same time, it is stated that Ukrainian is the only state language, on five TV channels of these ‘defenders of Russian speakers’ Russian is in the same enclosure as the one Poroshenko put it in. And with the same Russophobic stench. They either foolishly or cunningly do not realise that lies must be exposed, not given PR, hiding behind pluralism and freedom. Freedom of speech is freedom for truth and credibility, not for lies and fraud. This is a canon of journalism. They have a sea of inveterate bastards, warmongers, Russophobes, and liars who are always on TV screens. If it’s not Gordon, then it is Tyagnibok, and if it’s not Tyagnibok, then it is Tuka. They denounced the Poroshenko junta and fought it in a peculiar way: ‘we will certainly win, we will establish peace, we will reduce tariffs manyfold, we will abolish cannibalistic reforms – pension, medical, school, language, etc., but the most important thing – no protests, we do not need new Maidans! Only legality! Justice through elections! Bear with it for two years, a year and a half, a year, six months, three months… You suffered, well, so what?’ If they were to teach the French the same way, the ‘Yellow Vests’ would only sit at TVs waiting for another presidential election.”
Let’s suppose that the opposition is cowardly and helpless, but didn’t President Zelensky also promise to defend the Russian language?
“It is more correct to say that he mentioned it in an interview with the artist Boklan. Allegedly, somehow it is necessary to respect the [Russian – ed] old women who once came to Ukraine and spoke in Ukrainian. Adopt a law defending the language of the national minorities. Let them for one last time have a chat. After all, their grandchildren already speak Ukrainian.”
And Russian is considered the language of the national minority?
“According to the Constitution and the Law it is singled out separately. Once upon a time, trees were large and lawmakers were smart.”
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