Leaders of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church have pushed back on the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom's assessment of religious freedom in Ukraine
As best as I can find, there was no Ukrainian Law on Religious Organizations and Freedom of Conscience adopted in 1991. In December of that year, Ukraine became independent of the Soviet Union, and adopted its Constitution, which included some religious (and irreligious) protections and the general requirement that Ukrainian law takes precedence over religious practice.
This seems to be a disingenuous argument. The Constitution is law, therefore provisions within the law dealing with Religious Organizations and Freedom of Conscience were adopted in 1991, among other provisions.
It wasn't an argument, it was a statement of the fact that I could not find it or evidence of its existence. The law in question is not part of the Constitution, which is why it has its own name. Stephen P found it for me.
Yes, there was such a law and it was enacted in April 1991. Ukraine gained independence from the Soviet Union a few months later in August that year. Here is a link to the text, in Ukrainian, that you can Google Translate if you’re interested: https://zakon.rada.gov.ua/laws/show/987-12#Text
To encourage an intelligent reaction, I would suggest that the phrase that I cite in all caps below should appear in the headline, not three paragraphs down in the article... "religious organizations affiliated with FOREIGN ENTITIES OPERATING IN COUNTRIES ENGAGED IN WARFARE AGAINST UKRAINE".
It's hard to view the Russian Orthodox Church as even a Christian organization, it is the altar-boy (to take Pope Francis's turn of phrase) for Putin's revanchists world view. The tie between the Orthodox World and the State (Caesaropapism) has always been one of the difficulties with it.
The ROC today and the Kremlin truly exemplify what happens to a Christian "church" that unites itself too closely with the state.
It's one thing to have military chaplains, it's another thing to be blessing nuclear missiles and building a cathedral that canonizes the countries military leadership. To say nothing of the more overt celebration of the invasion of Ukraine.
I doubt that if the breakaway regions of Ukraine were included in this survey, only 7 percent would oppose this law. Either Ukraine already has de facto acknowledged the loss of those regions to Russia permanently and losing a sizeable Russian minority or it will have to get rid of this law.
The spark that started the Russian invasion was not just the attempts of Ukraine entering NATO, but also the discrimination of the Russian minority (and other minorities like Poles and Hungarians) by Ukraine forcing all kids to attend Ukrainian language schools (where Russian, Polish or Hungarian were treated as a foreign language--a no no for any minority who have lived in Ukraine for centuries) and forcing an ideological curriculum where historical figures like Stepan Bandera, the head of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, who was responsible for the genocide of hundreds of thousands of Poles and Jews during World War II, are extolled as national heros who cannot be criticized as there are imprisonment penalties attached to that "crime" in Ukraine.
If education caused such turmoil, forcing Russians in Ukraine to attend an Orthodox Church run by Ukrainian nationalists will simply not work. Allow for each parish to pick their patriarchate (Kiev vs Moscow), but forcing everyone to leave the Moscow Patriarchate will simply be the cause of continued war.
When Ukraine had two separate independent states for a few years after the end of World War I ( the only time Ukraine was independent), the final borders were never established and Crimea was never part of it, being inhabited only by Russians and Tatars. Stalin and Khrushchev established the borders of Ukraine, leaving a sizeable Russian minority that had lived for centuries in Crimea and the Donbas area and did not want to be part of Ukraine.
Then the Ukrainian radical nationalist parties decided to overthrow the legitimately elected Ukrainian President Yanukovych in 2013 with the help of Obama's CIA and put in their own radical natiinalists like Poroshenko in charge. Because they were successors of the UPA forces that had brutally butchered innocent Poles and Jews in the 1940's and they openly supported that ideology, they were not well-respected as partners by the Europeans. So they invented the idea of placing a second rate Jewish comedian Zelensky as their frontman, so they would look legitimate while they pursued their racist anti-Russian, anti-Polish, and anti-Hungarian policies, while corruptly stealing from the Ukrainian people.
I remember how the head of Caritas in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Lviv visiting Chicago said at a meeting I attended how literally zero of the humanitarian aid from Western countries reached their intended target in the country, all of it being stolen by Ukrainian criminal organizations linked with the Ukrainian government. Only aid provided to the Catholic Church in Ukraine from Poland and Germany actually helped the poor in Ukraine.
My mother lived in the lands where Operation Vistula occurred. Between 1944 and 1947, when the UPA was fighting both the Polish underground and the Polish Communist Army at the same time, she basically lived in ditches at night and cellars during the day which resulted in her developing rickets by the age of 8 from lack of Vitamin D. She was hiding with her family from the Ukrainian UPA who would torture Poles (and any Ukrainians who did not support them) in the worse possible way, including ripping children into pieces. My father, whose family was deported from Lviv, was in a group of people which had 7 grenades. If the UPA attacked, 4 grenades were meant for defending against the Ukrainians, 3 were to be used by the male adults to kill their own family members. The Nazis or Soviets would shoot you. The UPA would torture everyone to death over a period of hours.
Stalin had deported most Poles from Ukraine, and most Ukrainians were to be deported to the Ukraine, but Stalin stopped the Ukrainian deportations. Instead, the remaining Ukrainians were deported by the Polish Communist government, who wanted to stop the UPA by getting rid of their support in Ukrainian villages, to the Western and Northern lands taken from Germany and given to Poland. Few if any civilians were physically harmed, though UPA members who were caught were often executed. Though the deportations were wrong, Ukrainian families with an average of 5 to 10 acres in eastern Poland were moved to German farms with an average of 100 acres along with farm equipment left by deported German farmers. They actually became wealthier. After 1956, these Ukrainians could have returned home to the poorer eastern Poland, but almost all decided to remain on their much larger Western properties. My father's family, on the other hand, was not allowed to even visit Lviv until 1991.
Thomas, I'm not directly disputing what you've written, but you seem to be making the "tu quoque" logical fallacy.
Even if one assumes everything you posted above (and below) is true, Kurt's original point still stands: Ukraine's boarders were known and recognized--and then violated.
Whether or not they should have been drawn as they were does not negate the fact that Ukraine is the victim of an invading foreign force that has violated its sovereignty. And that fact remains regardless of how culpable elements of the Ukrainian government and non-government actors may or may not have been in committing past wrongs.
Yes, Putin is a crafty murderer and frankly should be executed like the Nazi criminals in Nuremberg, and there is no doubt that the invasion of Ukraine was an atrocity (though I am not sure the occupation of Crimea is in the same category--as Ukraine's right to that land has zero historical or ethnic basis). However, there is also little doubt that the war would not have started without the coming to power of nationalistic, corrupt forces in Ukraine helped by corrupt Western officials like the Biden family who happened to be financially linked with several Ukrainian corporations. I have problems with those who keep wanting each war to be black and white, with a hero and villain like some Avenger movie. It is not that simple. Many wars are like the Nazi German invasion of Soviet Russia: the Nazis were the invaders, but it is not like the Soviets were innocent doves either.
As best as I can find, there was no Ukrainian Law on Religious Organizations and Freedom of Conscience adopted in 1991. In December of that year, Ukraine became independent of the Soviet Union, and adopted its Constitution, which included some religious (and irreligious) protections and the general requirement that Ukrainian law takes precedence over religious practice.
This seems to be a disingenuous argument. The Constitution is law, therefore provisions within the law dealing with Religious Organizations and Freedom of Conscience were adopted in 1991, among other provisions.
It wasn't an argument, it was a statement of the fact that I could not find it or evidence of its existence. The law in question is not part of the Constitution, which is why it has its own name. Stephen P found it for me.
Yes, there was such a law and it was enacted in April 1991. Ukraine gained independence from the Soviet Union a few months later in August that year. Here is a link to the text, in Ukrainian, that you can Google Translate if you’re interested: https://zakon.rada.gov.ua/laws/show/987-12#Text
Thank you! There's a translation on the same site: https://zakon.rada.gov.ua/laws/show/en/987-12#Text
To encourage an intelligent reaction, I would suggest that the phrase that I cite in all caps below should appear in the headline, not three paragraphs down in the article... "religious organizations affiliated with FOREIGN ENTITIES OPERATING IN COUNTRIES ENGAGED IN WARFARE AGAINST UKRAINE".
It's kind of an important point.
It's hard to view the Russian Orthodox Church as even a Christian organization, it is the altar-boy (to take Pope Francis's turn of phrase) for Putin's revanchists world view. The tie between the Orthodox World and the State (Caesaropapism) has always been one of the difficulties with it.
The ROC today and the Kremlin truly exemplify what happens to a Christian "church" that unites itself too closely with the state.
It's one thing to have military chaplains, it's another thing to be blessing nuclear missiles and building a cathedral that canonizes the countries military leadership. To say nothing of the more overt celebration of the invasion of Ukraine.
If banning “ideology” is how we save democracy, I’m not all that interested in a system that only works when certain people can’t say certain things.
Like American visa holder that dare say or write a word against Israel.
I doubt that if the breakaway regions of Ukraine were included in this survey, only 7 percent would oppose this law. Either Ukraine already has de facto acknowledged the loss of those regions to Russia permanently and losing a sizeable Russian minority or it will have to get rid of this law.
The spark that started the Russian invasion was not just the attempts of Ukraine entering NATO, but also the discrimination of the Russian minority (and other minorities like Poles and Hungarians) by Ukraine forcing all kids to attend Ukrainian language schools (where Russian, Polish or Hungarian were treated as a foreign language--a no no for any minority who have lived in Ukraine for centuries) and forcing an ideological curriculum where historical figures like Stepan Bandera, the head of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, who was responsible for the genocide of hundreds of thousands of Poles and Jews during World War II, are extolled as national heros who cannot be criticized as there are imprisonment penalties attached to that "crime" in Ukraine.
If education caused such turmoil, forcing Russians in Ukraine to attend an Orthodox Church run by Ukrainian nationalists will simply not work. Allow for each parish to pick their patriarchate (Kiev vs Moscow), but forcing everyone to leave the Moscow Patriarchate will simply be the cause of continued war.
No region of Ukraine broke away. An evil, foreign power invaded a peaceful, sovereign nation.
When Ukraine had two separate independent states for a few years after the end of World War I ( the only time Ukraine was independent), the final borders were never established and Crimea was never part of it, being inhabited only by Russians and Tatars. Stalin and Khrushchev established the borders of Ukraine, leaving a sizeable Russian minority that had lived for centuries in Crimea and the Donbas area and did not want to be part of Ukraine.
Then the Ukrainian radical nationalist parties decided to overthrow the legitimately elected Ukrainian President Yanukovych in 2013 with the help of Obama's CIA and put in their own radical natiinalists like Poroshenko in charge. Because they were successors of the UPA forces that had brutally butchered innocent Poles and Jews in the 1940's and they openly supported that ideology, they were not well-respected as partners by the Europeans. So they invented the idea of placing a second rate Jewish comedian Zelensky as their frontman, so they would look legitimate while they pursued their racist anti-Russian, anti-Polish, and anti-Hungarian policies, while corruptly stealing from the Ukrainian people.
I remember how the head of Caritas in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Lviv visiting Chicago said at a meeting I attended how literally zero of the humanitarian aid from Western countries reached their intended target in the country, all of it being stolen by Ukrainian criminal organizations linked with the Ukrainian government. Only aid provided to the Catholic Church in Ukraine from Poland and Germany actually helped the poor in Ukraine.
I remember the barbarism of Poland in Operation Vistula.
My mother lived in the lands where Operation Vistula occurred. Between 1944 and 1947, when the UPA was fighting both the Polish underground and the Polish Communist Army at the same time, she basically lived in ditches at night and cellars during the day which resulted in her developing rickets by the age of 8 from lack of Vitamin D. She was hiding with her family from the Ukrainian UPA who would torture Poles (and any Ukrainians who did not support them) in the worse possible way, including ripping children into pieces. My father, whose family was deported from Lviv, was in a group of people which had 7 grenades. If the UPA attacked, 4 grenades were meant for defending against the Ukrainians, 3 were to be used by the male adults to kill their own family members. The Nazis or Soviets would shoot you. The UPA would torture everyone to death over a period of hours.
Stalin had deported most Poles from Ukraine, and most Ukrainians were to be deported to the Ukraine, but Stalin stopped the Ukrainian deportations. Instead, the remaining Ukrainians were deported by the Polish Communist government, who wanted to stop the UPA by getting rid of their support in Ukrainian villages, to the Western and Northern lands taken from Germany and given to Poland. Few if any civilians were physically harmed, though UPA members who were caught were often executed. Though the deportations were wrong, Ukrainian families with an average of 5 to 10 acres in eastern Poland were moved to German farms with an average of 100 acres along with farm equipment left by deported German farmers. They actually became wealthier. After 1956, these Ukrainians could have returned home to the poorer eastern Poland, but almost all decided to remain on their much larger Western properties. My father's family, on the other hand, was not allowed to even visit Lviv until 1991.
Thomas, I'm not directly disputing what you've written, but you seem to be making the "tu quoque" logical fallacy.
Even if one assumes everything you posted above (and below) is true, Kurt's original point still stands: Ukraine's boarders were known and recognized--and then violated.
Whether or not they should have been drawn as they were does not negate the fact that Ukraine is the victim of an invading foreign force that has violated its sovereignty. And that fact remains regardless of how culpable elements of the Ukrainian government and non-government actors may or may not have been in committing past wrongs.
Yes, Putin is a crafty murderer and frankly should be executed like the Nazi criminals in Nuremberg, and there is no doubt that the invasion of Ukraine was an atrocity (though I am not sure the occupation of Crimea is in the same category--as Ukraine's right to that land has zero historical or ethnic basis). However, there is also little doubt that the war would not have started without the coming to power of nationalistic, corrupt forces in Ukraine helped by corrupt Western officials like the Biden family who happened to be financially linked with several Ukrainian corporations. I have problems with those who keep wanting each war to be black and white, with a hero and villain like some Avenger movie. It is not that simple. Many wars are like the Nazi German invasion of Soviet Russia: the Nazis were the invaders, but it is not like the Soviets were innocent doves either.