Orthodox Pray in Our Own Church in Dublin

The Church of St John of Shanghai in Colchester was built in 1855 and is the largest wooden church in the British Isles and Ireland. St John’s is attended annually by 5,000 Orthodox of 25 nationalities. It has two altars, three priests of different nationalities, two deacons and Sunday attendance is between 200 and 400.  It is administered by the East of England Orthodox Church Trust (Charity No. 1081707), centred in the City of Colchester, which cares for our Deanery of seven multinational Orthodox parishes in Colchester, the East of England and beyond.

St John’s is a parish of the Romanian Orthodox Archdiocese of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, part of the Autonomous Orthodox Metropolia of Western and Southern Europe with its Synod of 7 bishops and over 900 parish churches and many monasteries. Our rapidly expanding Archdiocese  already has 108 priests and 17 deacons in 95 parishes and 5 monasteries, as Vladica Atanasie ordains our many candidates throughout Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Next to us, however, with Bishop Nectarie of Ireland and Iceland there are another 10 parishes and 15 priests and his Diocese has had wonderful news:

https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/social-affairs/2025/09/14/miracle-from-god-romanian-orthodox-community-gathers-in-newly-purchased-cathedral/

 

 

‘There is No Grace Outside the Orthodox Church’. True or False?

The very fact that the above statement is sometimes made displays either ignorance of the rudiments of our Faith, or else a pathological state. The latter by definition quenches the Holy Spirit, Who is the source of grace. And yet the statement is widespread among the tiny numbers of pseudo-Orthodox sectarians who are not and do not wish to be in communion with the Orthodox Church, known as ‘old calendarists’, Greek, Bulgarian, Romanian, Serbian and Russian. The Russians are from the Russian Old Calendarists Outside Russia, who are now struggling to overcome their latest pedophile scandal.

Such old calendarists, perhaps 75% of them in the USA, number some 10,000 individuals and are divided into some 20 different tiny sects, which are constantly warring with each other. In this they resemble the various warring Protestant sects, which comes as no surprise as most old calendarists are ex-Protestants. They enjoy telling each other and others, that they ‘will go to hell’, as they are possessed by the spirit of pharisaic condemnation. This is the darkness of every Spiritless and so Loveless human ideology, which stems from demonic pride. Such pride is founded on praise of self by condemning others.

In this way they feel superior to others, their hearts swollen with self-loving pride, as they have deprived themselves of the Holy Spirit and so of humility. They fail to understand the basic theological truth that we are saved only by Divine Mercy, never by any narrow human ideologies, which are always founded on the absence of love, that is, on hatred. The pharisees ignore the words of Christ, that ‘the wind (Spirit) blows where it wishes’ (Jn. 3, 8) and of the Creed: ‘I believe in the Holy Spirit…Who spoke by the Prophets’. These words clearly disprove the human ideology that there is no grace outside the Church.

Denying these words, the human ideologists of exclusive grace, that grace belongs to them only, declare that Christ was lying, that the Prophets were not saved, including the Forerunner John, the last Old Testament and first New Testament Prophet, was not saved, and nor was the Mother of God, at least for the first 33 years of her life. They deny that the Spirit can blow and call people into the Church, like the Jews before Christ spoke to them, like the Archangel-visited Inuits before St Innocent came to them. And such is their anti-historical sense and hatred that they condemn generations even of their own ancestors.

St Sophrony the Athonite explained Orthodox theology to us nearly fifty years ago, in 1978, before many of the saint-denying, ‘Orthodox’ sectarians were even born. This followed a scandal on Mt Athos. Orthodox sacramental theology is clear, he said. The sacramental forms outside the Orthodox Church are not sacraments, but rites. The sacramental potential of those rites is only activated by the grace that comes from contact with the Church. Thus, there is no need to repeat the rite. Anything that is ritually deficient (single immersion or splashing instead of triple immersion, for example) is covered by the grace of the Church.

The fact that people come to the Church is proof that the Church transmits (non-sacramental) grace outside of Herself, the free and direct grace of the Holy Spirit. However, that grace cannot be maintained in the world without the support of the grace from the sacraments, that is, sacramental grace. This explains the age-old and universal (except among the new, US, pseudo-Russian old calendarists) practice of the canonical Russian Church of receiving Catholics by confession and communion. Certainly, when I was in the old ROCOR, I received Catholics thus, in faithfulness to the practices of the old, Russian ROCOR.

As an Orthodox prison chaplain, I am in constant contact with Orthodox thieves, fraudsters, rapists and even murderers. They are all baptised Orthodox Christians. Do these then have grace, whereas my fellow-chaplains, Catholic or Protestant and other good, but Non-Orthodox, people, have no grace? This is absurd and reveals only that the old calendarists have no knowledge and experience of life in their gloomy and negative ghettoes, where apparently the Sun does not shine. They are victims of their own ideology of censorious, accusatory and sectarian judgementalism, so self-isolated from the Church.

Those who deny the presence of any grace outside the Church, deny that the Church is like the Sun – it shines on all, the righteous and the wicked alike. Those who deny this, limit God, taking over His role as the Only Giver of grace of the Holy Spirit, Who proceeds from the Father, and not from old calendarist schismatics. No ‘infallible’ Pope, of Rome or of any other Western Capital, can dispose of the Holy Spirit. All such bishops are literally ‘disGraceful’. In the homelands of Orthodoxy, ancient homelands as in Western Europe, or modern homelands as in Eastern Europe and West Asia, we know this from experience.

 

 

 

 

 

September 2025: A Tale of Two Cities and of Two Saints

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way…

Charles Dickens

Two Cities (1859)

Dickens’ The Tale of Two Cities was published 166 years ago and concerned the two cities of London and Paris. Today these cities have become rather irrelevant on the world stage and been replaced by others. These are Ekaterinburg, which in 1918 became the New Paris, the City of Martyrdom, as was old Paris for a time after 1789, and Shanghai, which has become the new centre of commerce, the New London, as was old London until 1918. Ekaterinburg is in North Asia (Eurasia), at the very frontier of Europe and Asia, and Shanghai is in East Asia. In the first days of September 2025, they came to the fore, as three out of the four most important world leaders met because of agreements made in them.

Firstly, there was the meeting of the SCO (Shanghai Co-operation Organisation) and secondly that of the Intercontinental BRICS, founded in Ekaterinburg. The main languages were Mandarin and Russian. And on 3 September over twenty of the most important world leaders gathered in Beijing to celebrate the 80th anniversary of the Chinese victory over the Western puppet of Japan, turned rogue, and against Japanese Fascism. 20 million Chinese were killed in this struggle, 16.5 million of them civilians, for China had to fight for fourteen years from 1931-1945 against 70% of the Japanese Army. This is unlike the USA which fought only from 1941 to 1945 and lost 400,000 from its armed forces.

In its battle against German Fascism, the USSR lost 27 million, 19 million of them civilians. In other words, the USSR and China lost 47 million people against Fascism, whereas US lost fewer than 1% of this. The world leaders gathered in Beijing were national leaders, not tyrannical, oligarch-appointed sexual perverts and puppets of the global banking cartels, as in the West, like Trump, Merz, Starmer and Macron. BRICS is the Concert of Sovereign Nations, which preaches non-interference, co-operation, and refuses to engage in regime-change operations or assassinations of the democratically-elected leaders of other countries. They highlight today’s Tale of Two Cities and Tale of Two Saints.

St Nicholas of Ekaterinburg (1868-1918)

BRICS was founded in the Tsar’s Capital of Saint Petersburg in 2006 and its first summit took place in Ekaterinburg in 2009. Ekaterinburg is the City of the martyrdom of Tsar Nicholas II, his Family and four of his faithful servants in 1918, though the first of them had been martyred in 1916. Tsar Nicholas had reigned over a summit of cultural achievement: Dostoyevsky (1881), Chekhov (1904), Tolstoy (1910); Tchaikovsky (1893), Rimsky-Korsakov (1904), Rakhmaninov (1943); Levitan (1900), Serov (1911), Repin (1930). In 1917 this apex of culture was overthrown in a right-wing plot of aristocrats, generals, politicians and lawyers, orchestrated by British perfidy and hatred of Russia in wartime.

The plotters were themselves soon overthrown by the crude and reactive Western ideology of Marxism, accepted and imposed mainly by Non-Russians. Mass genocide followed. Today, those of us who are faithful to the memory of the righteous Tsar continue his mission. Count and Countess Benckendorff, ambassadors of Holy Rus, travel throughout the East of England and beyond, recently visiting Royal Sandringham and greeting King Charles III, and renewing with St Edmund, the last East Anglian King, who was martyred like Tsar Nicholas by the same heathen. This is despite the apostasy of certain members of the Russian Church, whose liberation from the politicians we all await.

Tsar Nicholas II spoke five languages, Russian, English, French, German and Danish. He was multinational, wanting to build a church for Orthodox in every Western European capital, before the First European War prevented him from implementing this project. Today the Benckendorffs fly the multinational White Russian flag combined with St Edmund’s standard as their confession of the Faith. But a number of Church leaders are still stuck either in the masonic (1721-1917), or the Bolshevik (1917-1991), or the Capitalist (1992-2022) past. Thus, the plagues of nationalism, centralism and sectarianism infect the once great multinational Russian Orthodox Church and sadly enslave it and limit it.

St John of Shanghai (1896-1966)

Ekaterinburg has its saint, but so does Shanghai. Multinational, Imperial and Prophetic like our Tsar, St John (Maximovich) preached repentance for his martyrdom not only to the apostatic Russians in Shanghai, Western Europe and the USA, but also to the whole Western world. As a result of the weaponisation of Western finance, trade, the dollar and diplomacy, the United Nations (UN) may yet move from New York precisely to Shanghai, together perhaps with the IMF (International Monetary Fund), the World Bank and the WTO (World Trade Organisation). Although St John was persecuted, suspended and put on trial by the apostatic Russians in the USA, his victory in Shanghai is coming.

After all, the three largest BRICS nations alone, Russia, China and India, that is, North Asia (Eurasia), East Asia and South Asia, represent over three billion people, some 36% of the world’s population. All Eurasia is now being interconnected, as symbolised by new pipelines which are only reinforcing these interconnections. Even West Asia, the greatest nation of which is Iran, is entering into those interconnections, despite the Western wars against it. Africa, Latin America and even Oceania are also now entering into those interconnections. Missing only is the self-isolated and barbarically aggressive north-western peninsula of Eurasia, that pretentiously calls itself ‘Europe’.

That ‘Europe’ and its US master is now a blend of failed (bankrupt) states and rogue (which murder the heads of other countries) states. As globalists, their leaders hate as ever their own peoples. The 750 + US bases worldwide are not threats to freedom, but monuments to its bankruptcy. The Western world, Northern America, Western Europe, the crusader settler colony of Israel, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea and the 47 million of Oceania, is isolated. And so it mounts attacks against BRICS in Pakistan and Bangladesh, Nepal and Indonesia, Syria and Iran, Thailand and Cambodia, Venezuela and Brazil, Armenia and Azerbaijan, Bosnia and Serbia, Romania and Moldova, Hungary and Slovakia.

The Way Ahead (2025)

First the Western world lost its diplomatic, technological and military war against Russia, China and India. Then it lost its economic war of illegal sanctions and tariffs, against Russia in 2023, China in 2024, and India in 2025. Western Europe is still living in the past of its old empires. The Frankish Empire of Western Europe, built against Eastern Europe (from 882 on), against Southern Europe (from 999 to 1194), against Northern Europe (from 1066 on) and then against the coastlands of West Asia and North Africa (from 1096 on), is over. This millennial empire is why it is four times more difficult for Western Europe to give up its hubris and fantasy than for the USA with its mere 250-years of empire.

At this very moment Western European governments are collapsing in violence. Its European Wars, ‘World War One’ (1914-18) saw the suicide, or rather murder by Zionists, of the German Second Empire (Reich), the Russian Imperial, the Austro-Hungarian and the Ottoman Empires. ‘World War Two’ (1939-45) saw the suicide, or rather murder, of the German Third Empire (Reich), the British, the French and the Japanese Empires. ‘World War Three’ (2022- ) saw the suicide, or rather murder, of the US Empire and that of its vassals in Western Europe, the Ukraine and Israel. At this very moment, Western European governments are collapsing. And the cause is the same – suicide or murder.

‘It would be a far, far better thing that you do, than you have ever done’ for the West to return to the Pre-West. This is the West of the Age of the Saints. For authentic Christianity is not a Western religion, but came out of Asia for the whole world. And so the West would become again part the rest of the world. This is the future, to rejoin the Concert of the Sovereign Nations, in respect and toleration. US intolerance, like its religion, does not export. US religion was cast out of Europe because of its intolerance, its intimidation and bullying are not Christian. Western intolerance, interference in the affairs of others, is dead, which is why the Western world is the museum and the cemetery of its past.

 

 

 

Questions and Answers August 2025

Church Unity 

Q: How can we arrive at Church Unity, when all sixteen Local Churches are at last in communion with one another?

A: I can answer this on the basis of the achievement of Russian Church unity (2007-2021), in which I helped a little. This was achieved by the compromises made by all sides, which got rid of the extremes of the three Russian jurisdictions. The MP had to renounce, at least for a time, Sergianist Sovietism, ROCOR had to renounce, at least for a time, Russian Fascism, and Rue Daru had to renounce Western Liberalism. It will be the same in the question of the unity of the whole Church. Greek, Russian and other nationalisms (Ukrainian, Estonian, Latvian and others) are responsible for the present divisions. Who will have the courage to renounce such nationalism?

A word of warning, however. Since 2021 when Russian Church unity was achieved, some powerful elements have renounced their compromises and gone back to their extremes, so unity has been lost. Thus, the fanatical and schismatic US convert elements in ROCOR broke communion with Rue Daru and centralising MP nationalists are pushing the Church back towards Stalinist Sovietism. Through nationalist fanaticism and schism the Persecuted Church has become once more the Persecuting Church, the Church of the Pharisees, thus scandalously renouncing the legacy of the New Martyrs and Confessors. And so regained internal Church unity has been lost, even inside the Russian Church.

Conversion to Orthodoxy and the Non-Orthodox World

Q: Why have so few Western Europeans joined and remained faithful to the Orthodox Church? I mean at most it can only be a few tens of thousands out of over 470 million.

A: In order to become a real and not a superficial Orthodox Christian, it is no good admiring ‘mystical’ monks, ‘pretty’ icons, ‘lovely’ singing, or the ‘traditional’ liturgy. That is all emotional, superficial. You have to renounce, spiritually, the anti-Christian historical and contemporary acts committed by your national elites in acts of repentance. This means renouncing blind nationalism, for we are called to be not of this world – blind nationalism, the attachment to artificial States and elites, cannot be part of our Faith. This is true for all nationalities.

For example, if you are an Orthodox Russian, you venerate the New Martyrs and Confessors who were persecuted by Lenin’s and Stalin’s Soviet regime, which you therefore renounce, as well as renouncing the anti-Church acts of the pre-Revolutionary governments which go back to the seventeenth century and the resulting Old Ritualist schism of that time. Then you renounce the serfdom copied and introduced by the Western-style Russian aristocracy, which led to the anti-aristocrat Pugachov revolt, suppressed by the German Empress Catherine II, and later to the 1917 revolt. This is renouncing parts of your ‘national tradition’ also.

If you are from Western Europe, you have to go back much further, rejecting not just the atheistic secularist woke modernism of contemporary post-Protestantism or post-Catholicism, but also the imperialism and colonialism of the nineteenth century, the iconoclasm of the Protestants, the Popish heresy of the filioque, which claimed that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Bishop of Rome, introduced feudalism with its castle and knight protection rackets and the barbarian plundering and massacring of the Crusades with their ideology of racial superiority over others. The vast majority of Western Europeans are unable to do this, consciously or, far more often, unconsciously. Yet, such repentance for a culture gone wrong is at the heart of conversion to Orthodoxy.

Q: You appear to be opposed to converts. Is that so?

A: Not at all! I am opposed only to crazy converts, the pathological types, as they are called in French, especially when they are made priests, or, horror of horrors, bishops! The downfall of ROCOR was not because of convert clergy, but crazy convert clergy.

Q: Where do moralism and intellectualism come from?

A: They are both deviations which come from a lack of spirituality, from those who have ‘quenched the Spirit’. Moralism generally produces conservatism and then phariseeism. Intellectualism generally produces liberalism and then homosexuality.

Q: Why should the Church be opposed to tithing when there was a Church of the Tithes in Kiev?

A: ‘Desyatinnaja Tserkov’, ‘the Church of the Tithes’, is a well-known church in Kiev in the history of Ancient Rus, precisely because it was unique, built by tithes imposed on rich people. No other examples of an Orthodox church built by tithes are recorded. It is always quoted by US converts from Protestantism in order to justify the tithes they want to impose on Orthodoxy. Tithes are a practice of the Old Testament, beloved by Protestant sects, and are not part of the practice of the Orthodox Church, except in exceptional missionary circumstances, and only then when they can be enforced on the rich by the secular authorities, as they were in Kiev. In other words, the Church is not opposed to tithes as such, it is opposed to them being made compulsory.

Q: If the Pope were found to be a homosexual or a pedophile, there would be an existential crisis in the Roman Catholic world. When we know that some leaders of Orthodox Churches are such, why is there not some huge crisis inside them?

A: The short answer is because we are not clericalists. In other words, the Head of our Church is Christ, not some man, who by some sort of magic, has inherited his title from St Peter. The sins of others, including of Patriarchs, are their affair for their personal repentance. The Church goes on without them. The Church belongs to all, not to some mere clerical elite. They are here today, gone tomorrow.

Q: Are you shocked by the election of a new Protestant Archbishop of Wales who is a lesbian?

A: Stop the hypocrisy! That is none of our Orthodox business, it is theirs. Our business is that there are so many effeminate, homosexual Orthodox bishops, notorious for persecuting happily married parish priests, for their contempt for women and children, for their spiritually empty intellectualism and for their avarice. One small part of the Russian Church is increasingly looking like a Church of pedophiles and perverts, who ‘defrock’ all whistleblowers.

All these vices have the same origin – in their faithless lack of love. If Orthodox complain, then in the future, all Non-Orthodox engaged in ecumenical relations with Orthodox should demand to speak only to Orthodox clerics who are heterosexuals. The clericalist mafia always justifies itself. But the people know and they massively followed the ‘defrocked’ clergy, who before being ‘defrocked’ had transferred to a canonical, non-schismatic Local Church, where they concelebrate with all other Local Churches.

Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for you compass sea and land to make one convert, and when he is made, you make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves (Matt: 23:15)

It would be better for him to have a millstone hung around his neck and to be thrown into the sea than to cause one of these little ones to stumble (Lk: 17:2)

Q: What is the attitude of the Orthodox Church towards black people?

A: The same as its attitude to white people, or people of any other colour. All people were created in God’s image. In any case, Christ in His human nature was olive-skinned, not white. Look at any icon.

The only case of racism I have every come across was a white American convert bishop who said when George Floyd was murdered by a white policeman in the USA in 2020 that, ‘it does not matter because he was only a black’. Moreover, he said this in front of a mixed-race young woman, who never had anything to do with him again and when we left him, she was elated. And yet such a hateful bishop claimed to be canonical. It was one of the last straws, as he also publicly proclaimed that he disliked Greeks and Romanians and only half-liked Moldovans. That was in front of representatives of all those nationalities, to their faces. It really is time for those who consecrate new bishops to make sure that they are Christians first.

Q: How do you feel about no longer being in the Russian Church?

A: The only important thing for me is to belong to the Orthodox Church. The fact that a Russophobic agent, inspired by NATO, chased me and thousands of others out of the Russian Church and into another Local Church, in my own case after 47 years of faithfulness, is not on my conscience, but on the conscience of the authorities of the Russian Church who allowed this to happen for purely political reasons. This will go down in history. And I am quoting a Russian bishop who said precisely this to me.

Q: How can you belong to a Church that uses the new calendar when you use the old calendar?

A: Probably because I have always belonged to such a Church!

I distinguish between the dogmatic and the pastoral. I belong to a Local Church, just like the Russian Church also, that allows both calendars, according to pastoral need – as the old, pre-crazy convert, ROCOR also used to allow both. So many schisms and sects have been founded by confusions between issues that are dogmatic and issues that are merely pastoral, between primary issues and secondary issues. We reject that confusion.

Q: As you are an English nationalist, what do you think of illegal immigration? 

A: I am not an English nationalist. Nationalism is an ugly thing, as we can see from inhuman nationalist demonstrations, which create fear among poor refugees who have been chased out of their countries by Western-created wars. Nationalists are Little Englanders; Globalists are Great Britishers. I am a Great Englander. A patriot. I am English, more exactly East Anglian, and above all I am an Orthodox (not a heterodox) Christian.

In other words, I am a patriot of England, the real England of the saints and poets, of the spiritually sensitive. I am also a patriot of the real France before that horrible atheism began in 1789, and I am a patriot of the real Russia before corrupt aristocrats seized power and introduced serfdom and then when power was seized by atheists, Leninists and Stalinists. I have nothing in common with Masonic Russia, Fascist Russia or Stalinist Russia.

As for illegal immigration, I think it is illegal.

Q: Is it normal for Orthodox to write ‘the unworthy’ in front of your name?

A: Not at all. This is the false piety of pride of some converts. We are all unworthy and we know it. There is no need to display it. Stay modest, do not become proud, even of your unworthiness. Stop boasting!

The Russian Church 

Q: Since only 1-3% of the Orthodox population go to church in Russia, how can it be called ‘Orthodox Russia’?

A: This way of thinking, that going to a building on a Sunday makes you a Christian, is purely Protestant, moralising and abstract. Orthodox Christianity is our way of life, our culture, our values, our self-identification and nothing else.

Q: Where in your view did the Russian Church go wrong?

A: In 2003 His Holiness Patriarch Alexiy II, whom I met in 2007, proposed to open a multinational Exarchate and Metropolia in Western Europe, centred in Paris, that would be the foundation of a future Autocephalous Western European Orthodox Church. Who here could not go along with that? We all did. However, in recent years that idea has been abolished in favour of a nationalist Russian Metropolia, on paper centred in Paris, but in reality in Moscow. It increasingly excludes all Non-Russians, including Ukrainians and Moldovans, let alone native Western Europeans, from itself.

This is exactly the same mistake, made decades ago, as that of the Greek nationalist Patriarchate of Constantinople. It seems that some people never learn! This is not only the complete renunciation of the apostolic call and promise of Christ in the last chapter of St Matthew’s Gospel, and also of Patriarch Alexiy II and of St John of Shanghai and Western Europe. When the Russian Church renounces its saints on account of the same nationalism, bureaucracy, militaristic rigidity as the Greeks suffer from, then we know that we have to go elsewhere to live Church life.

Where did it all go wrong? Since the repose of Patriarch Alexiy II, especially from about 2016 on. Orthodox England rejoices in the Orthodoxy of Russia, but not in the rest.

Illustrations of this new political and anti-pastoral mentality include charging 100 roubles for holy water (as now in one Siberian Metropolia) or the recent Russian Church scandal in a former Soviet Republic. Here a youngish hieromonk, the secretary of the local bishop (who is a well-known active homosexual), asked to be defrocked in order to get married. He was granted his request. Some time later the defrocked man went to church with his wife, only to find a priest who, looking directly at him, said to all ‘some people here will not be saved’. This is sadly typical of the pure phariseeism that has become the norm in a few parts of the Russian Church in recent years. It has nothing to do with the Russian Church of the Emigration and of the New Martyrs and Confessors.

Q: Why do we not hear about Sergianism in the Russian Church any more?

A: I think we do hear about it, only much less. This is because it was always a purely political, anti-Communist, accusation from the Cold War, promoted by the CIA as a ‘heresy’. It was never a heresy, just a sin that come about from human weakness and cowardice, resisted by the vast majority of Russian Orthodox, and affecting only a few at the administrative head of the Russian Church.

The nature of this sin is to say in words, and sometimes in actions, that whatever the State, Communist or not Communist, proclaims, is true. This is known as erastianism and all the national Protestant Churches in Northern Europe have always suffered from it. However, we find it in the leadership of the Russian Church because since the age of Peter I, they have been protestantised in this respect. It could be said that the Russian Church reflects the error of the Church of England, whose bishops are all appointed by the Prime Minister of Great Britain and dare not contradict the Establishment, from which they profit and draw prestige.

Q: Why is the Russian Church sometimes very rigid, with many rules and regulations?

A: Firstly, the Russian State Church mentality, above all today with its militarisation, means that sometimes people give the impression that the Russian Church is an Army, not a Church. Secondly, neophytes/converts like to reduce everything to lists of rules on dress and outward conduct. This is not the Church, but a convert fantasy. Comparisons with other Local Churches immediately indicate how some are going astray from the mainstream. Moreover, the authentic émigré traditions of the Russian Church were of the mainstream.

Q: The life of St Antony the Roman states that he sailed from Italy to Novgorod on a stone. Do you really believe this?

A: I believe that he sailed from Italy to Novgorod on a merchant’s ship and at night he slept in a stone coffin, which he took with him. Many monks at that time slept in coffins, either wooden or, especially in the south of Europe, stone.

The Ukraine

Q: What do you think the war between Russia and the Ukraine is really about?

A: This conflict is not a war between Russia and the Ukraine. It is a proxy war between Russia and the Western world (the US and its Western European NATO vassals), which is taking place on a small part of the territory of the Soviet Ukraine and on all the other post-Soviet territories, where the US is trying to encircle Russia. In other words, it is a war between two different ideologies, between Globalism, the Western Oligarchic System of the 10%, and Nationalism, the National Systems of the Peoples of the 90%. The racist and Nazi West could not care less about the Ukrainians themselves, in fact, as they openly proclaim, they can ‘die to the last Ukrainian’ in defence of Western economic interests. As a result, the Russians are slowly going to demilitarise and denazify NATO, and not just the Ukraine.

This means conflict between the unipolar world of the West-centric woke ideology, led by the atheistic USA against the multipolar world of traditional cultures (cultures based on spiritual and moral values), led by Russia. The latter founded BRICS, an alliance for the co-operation of the multipolar world of sovereign countries, which all respect faith or morality (traditional forms of Christianity, Confucianism, Hinduism, Buddhism). After military victory, the immediate task of Russia will be to refound and restore a Sovereign country with its own identity within its natural (= Non-Soviet, historical) borders, centred around Kiev, without its oligarchs. Only then will there be peace.

Q: Do you think the CIA is paying ROCOR for its anti-Russian stance on the conflict in the Ukraine?

A: I don’t know.

As you know, the ultra-right-wing Grabbe faction received large amounts of cash for ROCOR from the CIA from the 1960s right up until 1991, when it was abruptly cut off, as the Soviet Union had been dissolved. Today the ROCOR Synod in New York is dominated by Americans, one of whom has a father, who held a senior position in the CIA and NATO, and is a great lover of Tony Blair. The CIA loves to have dirt on such bishops.

Among the others, who all speak fluent American, are those who have received support from the American administration (even a Cathedral and other properties in former West Germany), which is why it is known as the American Synod. Since for many in the US administration the Russian Federation is Public Enemy No 1, maybe in a few years’ time your speculation about the virulently anti-Russian statements of most of its bishops will be shown to be correct. However, of this there is no proof at the present time, all is circumstantial, so you may be wrong.

Q: You have been criticised for being political. What would you answer?

A: I have often spoken about politics, but not about party politics, probably because I support no political party. We have to speak about politics, when one Greek nationalist Patriarch is installed by the CIA and another Patriarch refuses to say anything which counters Russian nationalist politics. Both are examples of those who put local nationalism above Christ. We are not of the world, but we do live in the world, and like the Church Fathers we have to show that we understand who is who in this world, who we can support and who not. We refuse, as ever, to work for the CIA (or for its branches in the Brussels Politburo and MI6) or for the FSB. Naivety and cowardice are not solutions! We have to be aware, wise but gentle, as Christ instructed His disciples. The fact is that all divisions from the Church are caused by politics, nationalist or left and right, CIA or KGB.

 

Eight Propaganda Myths about the Conflict in the Ukraine

  1. Putin is a new Hitler and he must not be appeased.

However much Putin is worthy of being liked or being hated, one thing is certain: the facts state that his policies are quite different from Hitler’s and from the appeasement by Western leaders regarding his invasion of the then Czechoslovakia. The ‘Putler’ myth was invented and repeated by politicians and journalists who know nothing either of the facts of Czechoslovak history or of the Ukraine.

Czechoslovakia was not formed out of Germany, it was formed out of Austria-Hungary after 1917. Czechoslovakia had a small German-speaking minority, which lived on excellent terms with the Czechs. However, the Ukraine was formed out of Russia after 1917 and had a Russian-speaking majority, about 53%, whose language, religion and culture were severely persecuted by the anti-democratically Western-installed Kiev Fascist regime. Hitler’s forces mounted a full-scale, unprovoked invasion of Czechoslovakia to take over the whole Czech part of the country, whereas limited Russian forces, numbering only about 100,000, entered Eastern Ukraine to liberate it alone from Kiev genocide (14,000 Eastern Ukrainians murdered since 2014), with NATO-trained Kiev forces of some 800,000 massing on its border to implement ‘the final solution’ and Kiev threats of biological and nuclear warfare against Russia. Russian forces gathered only in order to force peace talks. To mount a full-scale invasion of the Ukraine would take 1-2 million troops.

Hitler wanted ‘Lebensraum’, Putin, as the leader of by far the largest country in the world, does not want that at all, he wants people to live in freedom from Fascism and have their own language, culture and religion. Hitler hated the ‘subhuman’ Czechs, Putin loves the Ukrainian people, which is why hardly any Ukrainian civilians have died in this conflict. He sees Ukrainians as the persecuted brothers of Russians who live by the border (‘U kraja’). The ideology of Hitler was anti-Slav Nazism, just like the Fascist and racist ideology of the Western-created Kiev regime, whereas the ideology of Putin is Russian nationalism. For eight long years Putin tried to negotiate peace with Kiev’s Western puppeteers, but they lied, cheated and refused even to speak with him. This was not the case of Hitler, who did not want to negotiate at all – just like the Fascist regime in Kiev. Virtually the whole world abhorred Hitler, virtually the whole world either supports Russia or else remains neutral in the Russian fight for survival against Western aggression. It is the Nazi-supporting Western world which is isolated, not Russia. NATO, which controlled the Kiev armed forces, was founded by Nazi Germans, whereas the Russian Army evolved from the Nazi-hating Red Army.

  1. Russia is an existential threat to Western Europe

The NATO-armed, -financed, -supplied, -trained and -installed Kiev regime was an existential threat to Russia. It had by far the largest NATO Army, a mass of CIA operations and military biolabs, the ongoing genocide of the Russian-speaking population in the east of the Ukraine and the threat to obtain nuclear arms. All of this went against the Ukrainian Constitution, which was founded on neutrality. As the unelected EU ‘Foreign Minister’ Kallas has openly said, the aim of the Western proxy war in the Ukraine is to destroy and break up Russia, and as a NATO general said, he wants to invade Russian Kaliningrad in one day.

However, Russia is not at all an existential threat to Europe. It wants only a neutral Ukraine and does not want even to occupy the Ukraine, let alone any territory beyond that. It wants to take back the Russian part of the Ukraine and let the rest live its life but as a neutral, demilitarised country, rather as was the Kaiser’s aim in France in 1914.

Russia is not an existential threat to Europe, but it is to the wealthy European ruling class, which flies Ukrainian flags, with its millennial imperialism (‘globalism’) and racist supremacism, aggressive expansionism eastwards, financial corruption, the debauchery of its sexual perverts and cocaine addicts, and pedophile institutions like the BBC and parts of Western religious establishments. This unelected elite of oligarchs opposes diplomacy because it wants to continue the war, rejecting all peace talks because it wants to justify its highly profitable NATO. It justifies its existence by imaginary threats from Russia. It cannot lose face, but Trump can, by branding this ‘Biden’s War’, so blaming it on someone else.

  1. Russia has not been successful in the Ukraine because it has not learned the lessons of the past.

Invasions of Russia by the Collective West have been very common for centuries, even well before that of Napoleon in 1812. The threatened invasion of Russian-populated territory in March 2022, carefully prepared from 2014, and even before, had been anticipated by President Putin. He had clearly learned the lessons of mistakes made by Russia before previous Western invasions.

Firstly, he had learned lessons from the Western invasion of Russia through the Crimea in 1853-1856. Here Russia had been undermined economically by Western sanctions and by its use of old-fashioned rifles. As a result, the British destroyed the (British-built) port of Sevastopol and the war ended in a stalemate, portrayed in the West as a victory. Lesson: Use advanced military technology and be prepared for sanctions.

In 1903-4 the West attacked Russia through a proxy, Japan, which the West had armed and financed, almost bankrupting Japan, with modern battleships. Japan attacked Russia unannounced, just as they later did at Pearl Harbour, and the Russian Fleet was humiliated. Although the Russian land war went relatively well and was on the verge of victory, Russia was betrayed by internal political enemies who created social disorder and Russia had to agree to peace talks. Lesson: Build a strong Navy and ensure there is no reason for internal disorder.

In World War One, by the start of 1917, a rearmed Russia was on the verge of victory over Germany and Austro-Hungary, but it was betrayed by the treason of the Germans, the British (and other pseudo-allies), its own treasonous generals, aristocrats, politicians and the lies of treasonous but uncensored journalists, and lost. Lesson: Do not allow treason, be prepared to arrest foreign spies and aristocratic and other traitors, and use censorship.

In 1941, Hitler and all his Western allies attacked the Soviet Union and was at first immensely victorious on account of Stalin’s inept leadership which had left his armed forces totally unprepared. The situation was turned around when Stalin handed over leadership to the military professionals who had been trained in the Tsar’s armed forces. Lesson: Be prepared for a treacherous attack and let military professionals deal with any aggression.

Russia has been successful precisely because it has learned the lessons of the past Western invasions of Russia.

4. Negotiations bring an end to wars.

Wars are not generally ended by negotiations, they end with victory and defeat on the battlefield, like the First and Second World Wars. The negotiations follow defeats.

  1. Russia is losing because it has scarcely taken any territory since 2022.

By far the biggest country in the world, Russia does not want any extra territory. It wants security guarantees. Its aims were clearly stated on 14 February 2022 and have not changed since then and the main aim was to destroy the Ukrainian military by attrition. This means avoid making frontal attacks and waiting to be attacked by the enemy. Defenders suffer less than attackers.

The dreadful conflict in the Ukraine is then a war of attrition. Wars of attrition, like the First and Second World Wars, continue slowly for several years, with little movement, and then end suddenly. Thus, the First World War ended in five months between July and November 1918 after four years of attrition before that, and the Second World War ended in eleven months between Operation Bagration in June 1944 and D-Day and the Soviet liberation of Auschwitz and Berlin in May 1945, after five years of attrition before that. Russia is no hurry in the Ukraine, on the contrary, the longer it takes, the more the West is weakened.

  1. Russia wants to occupy the whole of the Ukraine.

The Ukraine is an artificial state, formed by three tyrannical Communist dictators, Lenin, Stalin and Khrushchev, who brutally stole parts of Russia, Poland, Hungary and Romania to form the present, Soviet-bordered, Ukraine. Russia wants to recreate the historic Ukraine, more exactly ‘Kievan Rus’, within its real borders. The models for any future Ukraine are therefore Federal and democratic Switzerland, its neutrality guaranteed in 1820 and never violated since, or, in the second half of the last century, Finland and Austria.

  1. The Ukraine is a viable state.

The Ukraine has been renowned for thirty-five years as the most corrupt of the former Soviet Republics, ruled by the thirteen oligarchs, mainly non-Ukrainian, and a country deprived of human rights. The Ukraine has for long been bankrupt and now has the highest death-rate and lowest birth-rate in the world. Viable?

  1. Russia is a non-democratic, authoritarian regime.

The Russian President has for 25 years always gained between 60% and 85% of the popular vote. The EU Commissioners are unelected and all the Western leaders, who are now trying to impose censorship, were chosen by oligarchs and elected by between only 20% and 35% of their electorates. Perhaps the real leader of the Free World is President Putin?

Next week Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople is having to visit the USA. Almost certainly he will be told to abandon his gangster church in the Ukraine. It is one of the Russian conditions for peace, to have a Church that the people recognise, and not a nationalist State organisation imposed top-down, which the people ignore.

 

The Big Three: Who Will Collapse First?

At the Yalta Conference in 1945, the USA, USSR and Great Britain were called ‘the Big Three’. In the multipolar world of 2025 ‘the Big Three’ means China, USA and Russia. But there are also ‘the Big Three’ of the Western half of Europe: Germany, UK, France. In Europe many small countries depend on their economies and politics and especially in northern Europe, they depend on Germany. However, today the Big Three are either bankrupt or nearly so.

Even an IMF ‘bailout’ for France and the UK is being proposed and Germany, self-deprived of cheap Russian energy, is on the same path. Others suggest that both governments must issue bonds, to be bought by some still unknown bank, which are essentially war bonds, as the last straw in their indebtedness has been their insane support for the lost Ukraine. In the case of France, bankruptcy could mean the collapse of the whole euro fantasy. This means that the organisations that depend on the Big Three (given the US withdrawal from Europe as a result of its own bankruptcy), the EU and NATO, will also go bankrupt.

At the present time the UK Starmer, the repressive puppet of the financiers of the City of London, is hated and protests against him are universal. I have even recently seen signs in the UK declaring ‘Trump for Prime Minister’. In fact, however, the German Blackrock financier and Chancellor Merz, is equally hated, as is the French Rothschild financier, Macron, also. Macron’s second minority government under Bayrou is likely to fall in a few days’ time. Which government will collapse first? At present, some predictions state that France, the UK and Germany, will fall and in that order.

And we are talking about a fall within the next twelve months. The solution being put forward by some is a war with Russia, the ultimate distraction from the real problems of those countries. This is absurd, given the fact that Russia has shown no intention of aggression against Western Europe (though Western Europe is in a very violent proxy war against Russia). Western publics, unlike the elites, do not want war against Russia and in any case the pathetic militaries of Western Europe would not last even a few weeks against the Russian armed forces. War against Russia is all fantasy.

In such a case, what is the future of the Western half of Europe, the EU27 and the officially non-EU vassals of the EU, like the UK, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland, the ‘Western Balkans’ and Moldova? The most likely outcome is a change of elites in favour of realistic and pragmatic leaders, who will make peace with the Eastern half of Europe, Russia, Belarus and the New Ukraine, or whatever the latter will be called.

Thus, the countries of the south-east of Western Europe, those of the former Habsburg and Ottoman Empires, from Austria to Cyprus, from Moldova to Albania, from Romania to Greece, geographically closest to Russia, are likely to become members of BRICS, making their peace with Russia and renewing relations with China through the New Silk Road. Indeed, this rapprochement is already happening, especially with Hungary and Slovakia, although the EU elite is trying to foment regime-change in Moldova, Romania and Serbia as well, as it is losing them too.

Next, the countries of the north-east of Europe, Finland, the three Baltic statelets, Poland and above all Germany and probably Switzerland, will have to make their peace with Russia and the two other East Slav lands, Belarus and the New Ukraine. They will be followed by the Latin south-west (France, Italy, Spain and Portugal) and even the at present Russophobic Germanic north-west (the Scandinavian Four, Great Britain, Ireland and the Benelux Three) will have to make their peace with Russia, though it will need their hated, US-trained and appointed elites to be replaced.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Europe and the Ukraine: Away From Union and Towards Federation?

The Return to Normality through the Renewal of Multipolarity

The post-1945 Western/Globalist Order is over. It is dying at its own hands, by suicide, having voluntarily cut itself off from cheap Russian energy. True, Western Europeans still cling on to their imperial and colonial illusions and the relics of that Order, like NATO and the EU. However, in the USA, on which that Order depended, they have been realising that it is over. Thus, on 1 February 2025 the U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio finally admitted this shift in the global power structure, stating that the unipolar (=US-controlled) moment was an anomaly and that the international community is returning to its multipolar framework. That multipolar world has been ushered in by the BRICS Organisation, founded by Russia in Ekaterinburg on the 90th anniversary of the martyrdom of Tsar Nicholas who foresaw it, but it is ignored by Western Europeans who are stuck in the past. This means that the USA is now again just one of the Great Powers in the world, having been pulled down by its hubris that caused it to overreach and go bankrupt amid a string of political, military and economic defeats. Those defeats have finally helped it realise the new reality.

Bodybags of UK and US Corpses from the Ukraine at Lakenheath

I live under the flight path which runs between the very important US base at RAF Lakenheath in Suffolk, England, and Borispil, the main airport in Kiev. Flights overhead were very frequent in the second half of 2021. In October 2021 I saw why, when I visited Kiev again. I well remember seeing with surprise the massive numbers of NATO armoured vehicles and arms quite openly being unloaded and stored at Borispil in preparation for some new Kiev invasion of the Eastern Ukraine. These huge stores were among the very first to be destroyed by Russian missiles on 24 February 2022. Since then, flights from Lakenheath have varied in numbers according to the needs of NATO campaigning in its proxy war in the Ukraine, where the war is directed from the major US bases in Germany, in Wiesbaden and Rammstein. Last week a large US transport plane flew into Lakenheath from Kiev. According to someone I know well who works at the base, it was full of corpses of US and UK troops. These included those who had died after the Russian raid on Kharkov and their Special Forces raid on Ochakiv near Nikolaev, where three British operatives, officers and MI6, were captured.

Alaska Means Europe is Isolated

The bodybags in Lakenheath came against the background of the carefully-prepared meeting in Anchorage, Alaska last week. Russia only agreed to this, as Trump had promised to meet all the Russian conditions. We were reminded that, given Europe’s political, economic and military hostility to Russia, the latter no longer looks to Europe, but to Asia. As for the USA, given Europe’s political, economic and military irrelevance in today’s world, it too no longer looks to Europe, but towards Asia. We are reminded that even physically the USA and Russia are separated by only three miles, not by the Atlantic Ocean like Europe. Now it is Russia and the US versus old-fashioned Cold War Europe and the authoritarian puppet regime in Kiev. The old Unionist and aggressive Neo-Nazi Europe (the EU and UK elite) is isolated, only the inevitable and perhaps imminent fall of the already highly unpopular elites there can bring Europe back into the mainstream of the world. For the new USA and the new Russia are both set on finding a permanent peace that ends the proxy war, already lost by the West as Trump at least has realised, on the battlefield of the Ukraine.

Europe’s Shameful Decadence: The Fruit of Globalism and Liberalism

The Western European conglomerate (EU/UK/Kiev) is not only morally irresponsible (Globalism) but also morally decadent (Liberalism), like the ancient pagan Roman Empire. The leaders of ‘the Big Four’ (Germany/ UK/France/Kiev) are all said to be cocaine addicts. One of them certainly is, since the son of the former US President was one and supplied it in the Ukraine, where he lived. (He is also said to have done much worse than cocaine, but his laptop ‘disappeared’). Another is a senior agent for the US Blackrock financial company, which illegally owns much of the old Ukraine (and Germany). Another, a Rothschild banker, is said to be married to a man, who in any case is 24 years older than himself and whose relationship began when the future President was aged fourteen. And the final one, a ‘democrat’ who loves censorship and repression, is said to use Ukrainian male prostitutes and is in love with the Ukrainian dictator. The latter has been illegitimate since May 2024 and has banned the Church and all political opposition and opposition media. He was elected only because he promised to make peace, but instead made a disastrous war and ruined his country.

Europe Has No Cards To Play

It was clear that the USA had begged victorious Russia for the meeting in Alaska and that the Russian President only agreed to it because the US had at last understood Russia’s position and that the continuing war is now entirely the fault of the Kiev regime and its warmongering EU/UK backers. All the Western fantasies about a ceasefire, a frozen conflict, NATO ‘security guarantees’ and sanctions against Russia and its partners have disappeared. As the European vassals and warmongers, fawning on Daddy Trump’s ego, waited like schoolchildren in the corridor in the White House, Trump was teaching Zelensky a lesson about reality and giving him an exit strategy. All the talk that Russia is losing the war and has suffered huge losses is now known by the USA to be a mere ‘narrative’. If the bankrupt Europeans want to buy non-existent US arms with their non-existent money, they can still fantasise about that. The end of the war is in sight. There will be a new Ukraine, a much smaller one, with a democratic, federalised government and a free Church, and not ones imposed by the CIA and MI6. Europe’s problem is it wants peace, but refuses to negotiate.

Karma for Europe’s Double Standards

By psychological transfer the elite of Western European, founded on a millennium of genocide, accused Russia of ‘a full-scale, unprovoked’ invasion of the Ukraine. The Russian support for the liberation of eastern and southern Ukrainians from Kiev Fascism was small-scale and fully-provoked. Large-scale and unprovoked invasions, of Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, were, however, carried out, but by the West. The Western elite always uses Orwellspeak, using the opposites to describe others, thus, patriots are called traitors, traitors patriots, authoritarians are called democrats and democrats authoritarians, Fascist Ukrainians are called liberals, even men are called women and women men.  Today the only Soviet Union is the European Union: both were and are run by Western totalitarian ideology. All of this is happening against the background of the demographic crisis, which means, quite literally, that Europe is dying out: the young are mainly immigrants, for Western women have an average of only 0.8 to 1.5 children, the worst case being of course the Ukraine. This suicide is run by the elite, which encourages illegal immigration.

The European Elite Cannot Sell its Failure to its Electorates

The highly unstable and ever-changing European elite of politicians and journalists etc is extremely unpopular with its electorates. The people now vote for new, anti-Establishment parties (AfD, National Rally, Reform etc). None of the elite was elected by even 25% of its electorates, and they have painted themselves into an ever-shrinking corner. Last Saturday only five European leaders out of twenty-seven even signed an anti-Peace statement issued by the unelected EU – the coalition of the unwilling indeed. The senior European elite does not want peace, which is why it tries to prevent peace in Washington. Peace would mean that it has been wrong all along, as it was, and in part responsible for the deaths (or missing) of over 1.72 million Ukrainian soldiers and 120,000 ‘Russian’ (largely eastern Ukrainian) soldiers and civilians. And the elite is also responsible for the self-imposed economic crises in their countries, their crumbling infrastructure and mass poverty. That elite has refused time and again to even talk to Russia about peace. It wants war for its military contractors. Soon it will all be voted out by angry electorates and go into the dustbin of history.

The Evils of Dying Globalism

The Ukrainian battlefield was created by the movement of Unionism, the Globalist movement that reigns supreme in the EU and the UK, and reigned supreme in the USA until the end of last year, when ordinary Americans rejected it in their free election – that which is forbidden in Europe and the Ukraine. Although Trump is himself torn by what to do, he must act – the US faces bankruptcy. Peace could have come in the Ukraine at the outset, but it was forbidden by the EU/UK elite and the dark forces in the USA, who are now more and more excluded from positions of power. The US (Kerry) and Russia had agreed to peace and federalisation even in 2014, but the EU opposed it. Globalism and EU expansion to the Ukraine are the Unionist movements that caused the conflict. Western racism and moral bankruptcy are expressed in the words that the West intends to kill all to the last Ukrainian. The future is the federalised and decentralised BRICS world. This is the future for the New Ukraine, which will soon emerge in its new borders. For now, the EU/UK elite still clings on to past imperial power, failing to catch up with Russia and the USA.

Politicians Inside and Outside the Church Oppose the Catholicity of the Church

This conflict between Unionism and Federalism reflects the constant human rejection of the Divine Model of the Holy Trinity, of Unity in Diversity. That Model has always been rejected throughout history by one human extreme or another, by the forces that centralise and so create national injustices and resentments among minorities, and the forces that divide and so cause warring and sectarian factionalism and xenophobia. In this matter the Russian State is at last far in advance of the administration of the Russian Church. The Russian State founded the multipolar BRICS organisation, whereas the Russian Church has remained, like the Greek Church of Constantinople before it, stuck in its centralising, imperialist, one size fits all, past. In the case of the Russian Church, that centralising past is in Sovietism, in the case of Constantinople that centralising power is the old, and new, Cold War of the CIA, which has controlled it, ever since Patriarch Maximos V was deposed in 1948. All the living forces of the Church await the transfiguring breath of the Holy Spirit, Who will bring back the spirit of Catholicity – unity in diversity and long-awaited decentralisation.

Afterfeast of the Transfiguration 2025

 

 

A Shakespearian Tragedy of our own Times: 1995-2025

“Tis the times’ plague, when madmen lead the blind.”

William Shakespeare, King Lear

There was once a small but international US Corporation, whose CEO was a stern and uncompromising elderly man called V, who was the King Lear of his age. He lived in nostalgia for a disappeared past and did not want to recognise the new world that had emerged. He was so strict that he used to insult one of the frustrated, well-educated, go-getter young executives, who was called M. From that moment on, M began to plot with other younger ones how to get rid of V. V, who had suffered much in life, had difficulty with all this stress from the young and finally became overcome by dementia. At last, the young ones succeeded and M saw that triumph awaited him. All he had to do was to seize his chance.

True, they had to use violence to get rid of V, as he stubbornly refused to die, and at one point one of the young executives even tried to kidnap him. Nevertheless, V was gone at last, M’s personal grudge was satisfied, and all could be reshaped in his own image, as he had patiently been planning during his several years of frustration. Although patient, he could brook no contradiction. Now the other young ones, all rather weak and also disciples of M and whom he could manipulate at will, had their greedy eyes set on an alliance with another much bigger Corporation. They thought that an alliance with a Corporation 100 times bigger, which had long been resisted by V, would bring them all the big time and big money.

From this moment on, M and his team took over altogether. After all, M came from the upper echelons, he was the son of a Government Minister, he had completed higher studies and was very clever. He deserved power. However, M did not want to occupy the throne, rather he wanted to be the power behind the throne so he could pull the strings. The unpleasant task of occupying the throne could be fulfilled by his puppets. So he had L, a lovely, but elderly, poorly-educated, weak and malleable man, made the next CEO and an alliance with the big Corporation was made.

This alliance was supported by the vast majority, who worked for the small Corporation, though not because they sought power and riches like the executives. They were simply fed up with the isolationist antics of the past. Only a few really old or fanatical ones resisted. However, as the elderly L soon died, M replaced him with another puppet, this one, called H, was another lovely, but weak and malleable man. Now although H was scared stiff of M, he unexpectedly stood up to M in certain areas, wherever he could. M got very angry at this. How dare anyone resist him. M always eliminated anyone who resisted his high-handed and unprincipled ways and H had to bury the scandals for M.

Eventually, M got so angry that he began to undermine H, intimidating him and reinforcing his clique of young bloods, promising them even more power and riches. In this way the health of H worsened under pressure from the young bloods, who were led by and used by M. M began to sign all documents by autopen, behind H’s back. From this moment on, H was sidelined. In despair, H fell into dementia. Some days he knew his name, other days he did not, just like V before him. Then his physical health also gave way and he too died. H was replaced by M with another very weak character, N.

Much younger, N too was weak and malleable, just like L before him. In exchange for the flattering title of CEO, N had to take charge of all the scandals that M had been sweeping under the carpet for years. N knew that he was doing wrong, but his conscience was poorly developed and he was too weak to stand up for principles. Elsewhere, all were now waiting for the death of the by now elderly M, not least the big Corporation, with which M had allied himself. The big Corporation had for years been greedily and quite ruthlessly eyeing the valuable real estate of the small Corporation, like a tree with low-hanging fruit. They used to say there, a merger is OK, but ‘mergers have to be completed by acquisitions’, in other words, a single and unified administration, making the unneeded redundant.

They waited very patiently, as the small Corporation began to decay from the inside, as incompetent and greedy executives took over and argued among themselves. Disputes and scandals among the once young, but now ageing executives became ever more common. One scandal followed after another and court cases became frequent. When the rotten fruit fell, the big Corporation would take the lot. Outside the little Corporation, yet other Corporations waited alongside, as the sailors began to jump from the sinking ship of the little Corporation and were rescued and welcomed by them. Given the warm welcome, more and more jumped.

All could see what was going to happen, even M, who, now elderly, finally realised that his karma was coming: all his decades of intrigues had been for nothing. Death was coming and all his work would be swallowed up by the big Corporation. His little empire would be lost. It had all been labour in vain. Here was his Shakespearian tragedy, the tragedy of an old man, repeating the fate of V and becoming a new King Lear.

“Thou shouldst not have been old till thou hadst been wise.”

Fool, Act 1, Scene 5, King Lear

Then something quite unexpected happened inside the big Corporation….

(To Be Continued)

 

The Universal Prayer for Peace

His Beatitude Daniel of Bucharest and All Romania has issued a prayer for peace, which is to be read on 24 August in all the Local Orthodox Churches and among Non-Orthodox who sincerely want peace. This date will mark three and half years, 1,277 days, of the latest phase in the tragic, fratricidal conflict taking place in the post-Soviet Ukraine. We have translated it into English and Slavonicised Russian and publish it below. On the eve of the discussions in Anchorage Alaska between the two belligerents, may this prayer come to be used by all who wish for peace. His Beatitude has performed a great service of mediation, which we hope all will follow.

O Lord Jesus Christ, our God, Who art the source of life and of peace in heaven and on earth, pour out the grace of Thy peace on the world troubled by war and hatred. Extinguish misunderstandings and strife between people, and pour humility, peace and goodness into the hearts of all. Calm the warlike and grant them wisdom. Give help to those who suffer, protection to refugees and exiles, and comfort to those who are estranged and saddened, and grant us all the will and strength to help with all our hearts our fellow men who suffer from war.  As Thou hast say: Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the sons of God!  Teach us to seek peace in our hearts, peace between people and among the nations, as in hearts where there is peace, there is no more strife, love of power or fear, but the comfort of the Holy Spirit, the love of God and of our fellow human-beings. For this we humbly pray to Thee, O Christ our God, for peace among people in every land, for peace among the nations and for the good estate of the whole world, that we may live in good understanding and be able to do without let or hindrance deeds pleasing to Thee, glorifying the love of mankind of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, now and ever and unto the ages of ages, Amen.

 

Господи Иисусе Христе, Боже наш, Источниче жизни и мира на небесах и на земле, излей благодать Твою на мир, охваченный войной и ненавистью. Устрани разногласия и погаси вражду между людьми и излей в сердца всех смирение, мир и благость. Усмири воинствующих и даруй им мудрость. Ниспосли помощь страждущим, защити беженцев и изгнанников, утеши оставленных и опечаленных, и даруй нам волю и силы всем сердцем помогать нашим ближним, страдающим от вражды. Ибо Ты сказал: «Блажени миротворцы, яко тии сынове Божии нарекутся»  Научи нас искать мира в наших сердцах, мира между людьми и народами, ибо в сердцах, в которых царит мир, больше нет ни раздоров, ни властолюбия, ни страха, но утешение Святого Духа, любовь к Богу и нашим ближним. Об этом мы смиренно молим Тя, Христе Боже наш: о мире между людьми в каждой стране, о мире между народами и о благосостоянии всего мира, чтобы мы жили во взаимопонимании и беспрепятственно совершали угодные Тебе дела, прославляя Человеколюбца Бога – Отца и Сына и Святого Духа, ныне и присно и во веки веков, Аминь.

Meanwhile, in Alaska…

‘The circus left town, but the clowns stayed on’.

Russian saying

The US war against Russia continues in the Ukraine, although the CIA has at various points also tried extending it to the Baltics, Georgia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Armenia and Azerbaijan. President Trump’s bullying threats of illegal secondary tariff-sanctions against those who buy Russian oil, thus against India, although only against India’s gem and diamond industry (he had, as usual, completely misjudged the situation, thinking that India would be a soft touch), and also against Brazil and China, all failed. (Strangely, he did not threaten Europe, which hypocritically buys large amounts of Russian oil from India). In return, India has cancelled its order for further second-rate US warplanes, which Pakistan’s Chinese warplanes easily shot down; China can at any moment withhold its rare earths; Brazil is largely economically independent anyway.

As for his threats to Russia, the latter openly mocks them, as the 30,000 anti-Russian Western sanctions have only made Russia stronger. Trump’s war against BRICS, which is what all this is, has only consolidated its member-nations – the vast majority of the world – against the weaponisation of the dollar and against illegal US sanctions. So, like all bullies who are faced with those who are stronger than himself, Trump cancelled all his threats with excuses, leaving Kiev, whose leader ‘kills everybody’ (as Trump describes him) and the Western European elite in panic. So President Trump sent his real-estate agent envoy Witkoff to Moscow to sue for peace, cap in hand, and beg for a personal meeting with President Putin. Russia holds, as Trump would say in his poker mind, all the cards.

As Trump’s policies are destroying the US economy, his war against Iran failed, the Israeli Gaza genocide and the compromising Mossad/Epstein/Maxwell files hang over him, and Russia is victorious in the routed Ukraine, he is in urgent need of some PR victory. He needs to regain the lost support of his MAGA base. So why not hold a photo opportunity-meeting with the Russian leader? This will take place on 15 August, the feast-day of St Herman of Alaska and the 80th anniversary of the joint US/Soviet victory over Japan. It will be in what used to be called ‘Russian America’, known as Alaska, though Trump still calls it Russia. After secret Russo-American talks, the meeting was carefully prepared there by RF Kennedy a week before it was publicly announced.

The bankrupt US elite has no more money (37 trillion of debt) or any more obsolete arms to send to Kiev. The equally bankrupt Kiev/EU/UK elites are desperate, but there is nothing they can do either, except to continue to lie. Their favourite lie is that all that Russia wants from the Ukraine is some extra land. How absurd for what is by far the largest country and one of the least populated in the world! The war in the Ukraine had only one cause – the expansion of NATO to the east, when the US had time and again promised ‘not another inch to the east’.

In any case, Western arms are ineffective against the more advanced and far more plentiful Russian technology and are greatly depleted anyway. Moreover, disaffected Western peoples are opposed to their elite’s infantile militarism, and their astronomically expensive support for the bandit regime in Kiev (as also for the genocidal regime in Tel Aviv). This is all unacceptable in Western countries whose basic infrastructure is crumbling into third world status. Clearly, when Moscow, on the verge of military victory in the Ukraine, refuses to make any concessions in Alaska, as winning sides do not make concessions, Trump will be left with the ‘offramp’ or exit strategy (escape-route) that he really wants.

This is to walk away from the Kiev regime, stating as his reason the blindingly obvious, that Kiev, which depends on the war and its money to remain in power, does not want peace. This will leave the old Soviet and new Nazi Ukraine to the fate that its leadership has chosen for it, to disappear from the map. Once he has walked away from Kiev, he will claim that he is not responsible for the Western rout and blame it on Biden and the European dictatorships of Starmer, Macron and Merz. He will remain unstained, unlike Biden who was stained by the US rout in Afghanistan. And then Trump will be able to quit NATO, which is what he ultimately wants.

Perhaps, however, the US and Russia will at last come to an agreement about the new Eurasian Security Architecture, meaning a US retreat from its bankruptingly expensive arms spending. The US can leave the Ukraine to Russia on condition that all other national borders in Europe are guaranteed. This will give Trump the chance to grandstand as the great peacemaker and say he has ended the war and brought peace to Europe. True, winning the war will leave the military winner Russia, as the ultra-cautious Russian lawyer-President knows, to win the peace.

But that will be another story, which will also entail radical changes in the over-centralised, bureaucratic and so politically failed policies of the Russian Church, as well as the abolition of the absurd and $20 million CIA gangster fantasy of the ‘Orthodox Church in the Ukraine’. The time of reckoning is coming for all. It is all recorded in the Book of Life.