KYIV, March 27 – The Union of Ukraine’s Orthodox Citizens addressed President Leonid Kuchma in a letter, requesting that Kuchma bring Metropolitan Filaret, the head of Ukraine’s Orthodox Church of the Kyiv patriarchate, to criminal account, UKROP reported on Tuesday.
According to the union, Filaret participated in a coup attempt against the state on March 9, the day that anti-presidential protests turned bloody, the report said.
According to the union’s letter, Filaret “personally blessed members of the fascist organization UNA-UNSO for storming the president’s administration.” The authors of the letter also accuse Filaret of financing the extreme rightwing UNA-UNSO political organization, and of recruiting Ukrainians to “fight for international terrorists.”
Other accusations relate to Ukraine’s Orthodox Church of the Kyiv patriarchate, which is named in the letter as “schismatic.”
The letter reads that UNA-UNSO members had captured by force a number of churches, which previously belonged to Ukraine’s Orthodox Church of the Moscow patriarchate.
Members of the union expressed their hope that the registration of Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kyiv patriarchate would be cancelled, since “it was conducted in 1992 as rude violation of Ukraine’s legislation.”
On March 9 Metropolitan Filaret in a speech near the monument to national poet Taras Shevchenko said “Independent Ukraine cannot exist without the Ukrainian church; the Ukrainian church cannot exist without independent Ukraine.”
