For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places.

Matt 24, 7

See then that you walk carefully, not as fools, but as wise, redeeming the time, because the days are evil.

Ephesians 5, 15-16 

Better an honourable death than a shameful life.

St Dmitry Donskoy (+ 1389)

On our knees only before God.

Chant of the Pochaev Pilgrims in the Ukraine

Foreword

I have been asked why I speak of politics. Well, first of all, that was my secular profession as a lecturer in France. But in the Church, we must also know what and who. You could easily accuse St Cyril of Alexandria, St Maximus the Confessor, St Photius of Constantinople, St Mark of Ephesus and St Gregory Palamas of being political. I do not think they were, but they had to know their enemies and understand their motivations. My life has been spent avoiding politics, both the KGB sort and the CIA sort. But in order to avoid that, you first have to be aware of it, in order to keep to the royal path, avoiding extremes because they are spiritual diseases against communion. In terms of the Sixteen Local Orthodox Churches, this means Conciliarity, Catholicity, avoiding exclusivism, which leads to isolation on the fringes.

Krakow, Poland and Eastern Europe

In mid-August I was invited to Krakow. Old Krakow, with its Wawel royal castle, was the historic capital of Poland before Warsaw and is still the capital of the Polish Catholic Church. It has a typically Habsburg city centre, like Prague, Budapest or Vienna. On the River Vistula and not far from the Tatra mountains, the Beskids and the Slovak border to the south, this city of about one million is a tourist city, a University city, and is full of churches, its monks, nuns and priests walking in their cassocks, as used to be the case in Western Catholic countries until the early 1960s. Poland kept its traditions thanks, ironically, to the Communist Party. Conversely, Catholicism in ‘the Free World’, the Western countries, seems to have become as spiritually empty and vapid as Protestantism, thanks to Capitalism.

I am here for a week with Ukrainian friends, whom I have known since 2020 and who have introduced me to the Orthodox Ukrainian community here. Their interest comes because I am Russian Orthodox, but not Russian, and was forced to flee the Russian Church after 47 years to the Romanian Patriarchate for canonical protection from schism, sect and persecution. The centralised and politicised Russian Church administration does not protect its own, but persecutes them. As we communicate in Russian, suspicious Ukrainians ask to see my passport to check that I really am an Englishman. I recommend to them the Polish Orthodox Church and its local priest, Fr Rostislav, who is building a very large new and beautiful church on the outskirts of the city, retaining the present smaller city centre church.

Krakow and Poland bring me to reflect on Eastern Europe, of which I have visited every country and where I have travelled widely over the last five decades. Overwhelmingly, it seems to me that instead of joining the German Fourth Reich of the Western European EU club, which the UK left, and Switzerland, Norway and Iceland never even joined, Eastern Europe should have created its own Eastern European Confederation, a broader and formal ‘Visegrad Four’. Eastern European nation-states with their strong patriotic identities have so much in common with each other and so little in common with atheist and Globalist Western Europe. Of course, the USA would not allow that. This is their tragedy, that Eastern Europe once again became colonies and vassals, of the US via its German puppet.

Even in Catholic Krakow, a home to the Polish Sovereignist Party, hostile to the Polish-American puppet leader Tusk, there are ‘vape shops’, cannabis stores, tattoo parlours, a few young people dressed as Goths, burgers and fries and MacDonalds, and all the trappings of international tourism, brought to it by the Zionist/Globalist elite in Brussels. Today Poland is fighting for its national identity. I was pleased to see Polish folk dancing in the city centre, to see Catholic churches attended, to see the national sense of identity of the refusal of some to dress like Americans. Some of what I see has virtually disappeared in the West since the 1950s. But how long can Poland, like the rest of Eastern Europe, retain its identity and keep its sovereignty? How long can Eastern (like Western) Europe survive without Russia?

The Ukraine

Ukrainian refugees here expressed many different views to me. One was an ex- soldier who had deserted, others had saved themselves as soon as possible in 2022, in order not to have to die in the Kiev Army. They are refugees not from the Russians, but from Zelensky, protecting themselves, their husbands and their sons. Of course, there are others, those who just wanted to get out of the grinding poverty and corruption of Kiev as soon as possible, some were realising their cherished dream of living in an EU country, since the Ukraine itself will never be allowed to join the EU. I found all well-informed and they provided me with confirmations of my impressions, but they also gave me some surprising details, which I had not expected. They also needed to talk to a priest from outside about Church life.

First of all, all twenty people I met dislike, or rather hate, Zelensky above all. Elected by PR only because he had promised peace, instead he delivered a horrifying war. All confirmed to me their belief that the number of dead Ukrainian troops is about 2 million. They have seen some of the massive new Ukrainian military cemeteries all over the country, not least outside Kiev. One of the Ukrainians told me that in the recent exchanges Kiev has so far returned the corpses of 600 Russian troops, but Russia has returned the corpses of 18,500 Ukrainian troops, a ratio of 1 to 31. They detest Zelensky, since he chose war for the huge financial opportunities it gave him and his cronies to pocket billions of US dollars, EU euros and GB pounds and buy villas and casinos on the Mediterranean and in Florida.

The war continues only because of Western money. If it dried up for the already bankrupt Ukraine, the war and the tens of thousands of Ukrainian deaths every month would end at once. Here is why the second most hated man for them is Boris Johnson. This was a surprise for me, as here he was sacked in disgrace for his lies and has gone into the dustbin of history, almost forgotten. Not so in the Ukraine. For them he is the worst of the Western war criminals who have so much blood on their hands, blamed for persuading Zelensky not to sign the Istanbul peace agreement made at the end of March 2022. Since then, 2 million Ukrainians and 160,000 Russians have died. Only in third place of hatred for them came Putin (and Patriarch Kyrill alongside him, for the Ukrainians I spoke to, they are indistinguishable as murderers).

Few canonical churches in the Ukraine now commemorate the Russian Patriarch. They call him ‘the Muscovite’. He is the Russian enemy, ‘not one of us’. The Ukrainians I speak to, who all belong to the canonical Church, envy the Polish Orthodox Church under Metropolitan Sava of Warsaw. They eye autocephaly and the official non-commemoration of Russian enemies. Here we come to what so many nations, victorious in war, forget. You must also be victorious in peace. The Americans failed in this in Iraq and Afghanistan. If the Russians think that they can take the whole of the Ukraine, apart from the four or five far western provinces, in which Russians have no interest and which will surely be returned by referendum to Poland, Slovakia, Hungary and Romania (from whom Stalin stole them), they are wrong.

All the Church Ukrainians I spoke to want an independent Ukraine. Of course, this means at last a Ukraine independent of the EU and America (unlike the situation since 2014, since when the Ukraine has been a fully dependent Western vassal and colony), but also independent of Russia. In Church terms, this means either an Autocephalous Ukrainian Church, or, at the very least, an Autonomous Ukrainian Church with the right for all clergy not to commemorate the Russian Patriarch, except for Metropolitan Onufry of Kiev, who alone would have to sacrifice himself to do that, as now. One Ukrainian told me that he has friends in Belarus who want the same thing for Belarus. Instead of being an Exarchate, as at present, the Belarussian Church should also be an Autonomous Local Church.  So they said.

This would mean the development of a Russian Orthodox Church with four Autonomous Churches, two in the west, the Belarussian and the Ukrainian, and two in the east, as now already, the Japanese and the Chinese. This would mean the Baltics and the Moldovans (jointly with the Romanian Church, which has already given autonomy) alone receiving autocephaly – for that is the only way for them. Perhaps. What is certain is their admiration for Metr Onufry. He is a real monk, a man of silent prayer. He says only: ‘Pray!’ When will the war end? This was a very debated topic. One was certain that it would be next month, in September 2026, one said 2027. Another said 2030. Another said it would drag on for ten years. What is for sure is that all are fed up, they just want it to end as soon as possible, so they can live normal lives.

The Ukrainians are well informed through the internet. Ignoring US-controlled Kiev PR and propaganda, which is fed to and actually believed in by gullible Westerners, they know far better than Western people what is happening and just how corrupt the Ukraine is. Everything is for sale, not least Ukrainian women’s wombs, which provide 25% of the world’s surrogate children, and then there is the highly organised organ harvesting of dying soldiers. Another surprise for me is how much they consider that Jews run the Ukraine. Zelensky is of course a Jew, but he has also settled Israelis to live there and spoken publicly of the Ukraine literally as ‘A Big Israel’ and ‘A New Jerusalem’. They tell me that the Ukraine is run by ‘The Tribe’. And the Tribe has, they say, monetised death. But is this not racist?

Violence against a Jew now gets you eight years in prison. To insult a Jew costs you a lot. But surely that is the way it should be? And yet insults of and violence against Russians are encouraged, not fined or punished. Is this not racist? But the Ukrainians know that Russian military equipment is much better than that of the obsolete NATO. The Ukraine resembles Germany in 1945. They know they are lost. 66% want peace talks now, but they live in a dictatorship, surrounded by barbed wire. The bankrupt Ukraine is committing national suicide, demographically and economically. And, in moral suicide, the bankrupt West does not care how many Ukrainians die – they are just cannon fodder. War is business. They cannot say this out loud in the Ukraine, if they do, they will be arrested by the dreaded SBU Secret Police.

Last year one of the Ukrainians, in his 30s, escaped in the back of a lorry, wedged between fridges going to Romania, and from there made his way to Poland via Slovakia. For this privilege he had to pay $8,000. It was the seventh time he had tried to escape. As he was in IT, he would otherwise have been co-opted at once as a drone operator. He did not want to lose his soul. (See below). Some may say that in that case he could have deserted or surrendered. But the reality is that if you do this, you are likely to be shot in the back by the SBU Secret Police at the Front. The Russians have horrible weapons, artillery, drones, glide bombs, thermobaric weapons. They are awful. You do not stand a chance. If you can surrender, do so. If you cannot, you will die as a result of the horrible and brutal killing technology of the Russians.

They tell me: If Ukrainians in the Crimea and in the east who cannot even speak Ukrainian and do not want to learn it, since they, as Russian imperialists, disrespectfully regard it as a dialect, and they want to join Russia, let them. ‘We do not want to die to keep them’. We are Ukrainians and the Ukraine is only for Ukrainians, for us, not for Russians, but also not for Zelensky and his foreign Zionist oligarchs. Ironically, in Latvia, where they tried to ban Russian in public places, including on the street, they were swamped with Ukrainian ‘refugees’ who spoke Russian. Unlike local Russians, they could not be touched when they spoke Russian in public, however, because they were ‘refugees’ (refugees from Zelensky’s pressgangs sending them to die as cannon fodder). They could not be fined or spat on like native Russians.

A special hatred goes towards the recruiter thugs who pressgang men, and now some women, off the streets to fight. Social media show a multitude of these horrible videos. They draft the sick, the mentally handicapped, anyone, for they are paid for the number of bodies they can abduct, as they have quotas to fill. They are so violent that some ‘recruits’ die from beating and kicking on the way to the recruitment centres before they even get to training. Who cares, at least their organs can be taken and sold before they die. It compares so badly with the now professional Russian army of paid and trained volunteers, a far cry from Wagner Group cannon fodder. Training abroad in Germany, France or Britain is valued, as it gives the Ukrainian ‘recruits’ a chance to ask for asylum. This is why only very few are now being trained abroad.

The recruiters search especially for future drone operators, many of whom are now women (dronshchitsy). For any who like video games, being a drone operator seems very attractive – at first. However, it is the path to insanity. When pilots drop bombs, they do not see the horror on the faces of those whom they kill and maim. Drone operators do. It is frightening. They cannot sleep at night. However, all this nightmarish death fills the coffers of European politicians and spies, grandchildren of Nazis, like the Ukrainian-descended Metreweli of MI6, Western arms dealers and Ukrainian bureaucrats. Little wonder if, when it is all over, Ukrainians will treat Zelensky like the Italians did Mussolini. Will Western politicians and journalists then be asked why they lied for twelve years and will they be put on trial for those lies?

The clearly stated Western aim, of such as Brzezinski, the Rand Corporation, von der Layen and Kallas, is to destroy and dismantle Russia, stripping it of its assets. What cheaper way to murder Russians, as the dead US Senator Graham said quite openly, than using Ukrainians to do the job for us? But no Ukrainian wanted a ruined Ukraine, no Ukrainian wanted to die, few wanted to join NATO. This is enforced suicide. I am shown the video of a funeral in the Ukraine. The traffic stops. People get out and kneel down in respect. Not because they agree with this war, but because for them the Ukraine is the victim of the West, which wants to kill it. This is why the defeat of the Ukraine, about which the West is in denial, will be the end of NATO, the EU and the unelected Western autocrats, who work for and feed off the oligarchs.

These servants of the oligarchs include NATO generals, hated European politicians, such as the unelected British Prime Minister, and also the whole Western journalist class who sold out their profession for thirty pieces of silver. They do not care that the Ukraine is surrounded by barbed wire, like a giant concentration camp. I am shown a video of this. If you do manage to climb over it using carpets and thick gloves, beware. If you are seen, you will be shot by the dreaded border guards, who are also paid by quota. All paid for by the generous West. I was told of two women ‘back home’. Both lost their sons at the Front. One hates all Russians and the Russian language, as a result. The other, a believer, accepts it in humility: ‘This was for our sins’. She just prays for his soul and gives alms twice a week.

No Ukrainians I meet support the absurd fake church of Dumenko, founded and sponsored in 2018 by the CIA via the Greek Patriarch in Turkey. They know they are just a bunch of gangsters. But again and again the Ukrainians ask: ‘The Bulgarians have a Patriarch, so do the Georgians. They are very few. Why don’t we more numerous Ukrainians have a Patriarch? The Poles, Albanians, Czechs and Slovaks have their own Churches, why can’t we’? They want a Sovereign Ukraine and a Sovereign Church, neither a puppet of the Greek Patriarch, nor of the Moscow Patriarch. What is also clear is the hatred of Ukrainians not just for Johnson, but also for the elites of Germany, Britain and France, who have all paid for the deaths of Ukrainians, ‘to the last Ukrainian’. Here is the same very old Aryan racism against Ukrainians.

Apocalypse

Another aspect of these Ukrainians is their sense of the Apocalypse. After the covid disaster, which we now know to have been an American virus experiment from North Carolina that (accidentally?) escaped from a Chinese laboratory, the involvement of the Jewish people in the Ukraine, the birthplace of Trotsky (Bronstein) and Zionist Trotskyism, which in the USA became the ideology of the neocons, called Globalism, the rumours of ritual murders in the Ukraine, blood and organs being taken out of dead bodies, the open occultism and proud neo-paganism of leaders in Kiev, the involvement of Persia-Iran, Turkey, the war in the Holy Land, the recent uncovering of the relics of St Dmitry Donskoy in Moscow, all this is apocalyptic, signs of the times. And it is all amid the suicide of the Ukraine and Ukrainianised Western Europe.

Surprisingly, two Ukrainians mentioned the name of the eccentric and insulting Russian nationalist geopolitician Zhirinovsky to me. ‘He was a prophet’, they say, ‘and a fool for Christ’. And then they turn to blaming Putin. ‘He is incompetent’, ‘too cautious’, ‘a coward’. ‘He could have finished it all in a few weeks, instead he has dragged it out for nearly five years and two million are dead’. ‘He should have killed Zelensky at the start and taken Kiev, then we would have lived in peace’. This ignores the fact that in 2022, Russia was not prepared for a full-scale war against NATO, its army disorganised and part-privatised, and many of its military leaders were corrupt or incompetent, getting soldiers killed. Perhaps Putin was simply naïve? All that can be said is that Ukrainians are desperate for peace. They just want it all to end.

Perhaps, the present, third incarnation of Russia in 300 years, the Russian Federation, founded in 1991, which followed the Soviet Empire, founded in 1922, which followed the Russian Empire, founded in 1721, is also doomed to fail. 300 years of failure. Its Wild East Capitalism of the 1990s, producing the mafia oligarchs, the new aristocrats or boyars, is its final failure. Sadly, that spirit in turn infected the Russian Church. As in the 1990s, let alone today, any Russian will tell you that the Russian Church is run as a ‘Business’, that many bishops and senior clergy just want to play at ‘bandits’, ‘mini-oligarchs’. The problem with the 280 new Russian bishops appointed in the last 17 years is that the old bishops chose quantity, not quality, perhaps in a failed attempt to get a dominating majority of the 1,000 bishops of all the Orthodox Churches.

Pilgrimages and processions of the faithful have taken place in Russia, in Belarus, and to Pochaev in the Ukraine. For the faithful, the Mother of God has been in charge ever since the faked abdication of the Tsar and the immediate appearance of Her Sovereign Icon in 1917. The faithful oppose the overt Nazi satanism of the elite in Kiev, of Zelensky with his personal wizard. We also oppose the will to dominate, the Imperialism of elites who claim to be above the Church, above Christ, imagining that they have some sort of exclusive and infallible Divine Papal right to control all others. ‘Three Romes have fallen, a Fourth there will not be’. Surely, that all the Imperial Romes have fallen is the best thing possible for the Church, which has in history been riven only ever by the Imperialism of personal and national pride?

Afterword

The Sixteen Local Orthodox Churches are a Family, but families are sometimes split by arguments. Brothers and sisters fall out for a time. They may not talk to each other for a while, but eventually they can get back together. Our unity is in the Holy Spirit, not in an individual, Patriarch or Pope, whatever his title, for we are not an earthly organisation, not a profit-making corporation, not worshippers of Apollo and Cephas, but of Christ, the Head of the Church and the King of kings. And our model is the Holy Trinity, unity in diversity, praying for the peace of the whole world, the good estate of the holy Churches of God and the union of all people. All we know, and from very recent examples, is that through the Church we can become saints. And that if we are not saints, then we have only ourselves to blame.