MOSCOW, December 2. /TASS/. The deputy head of Russia’s Security Council, Dmitry Medvedev, has said that the current Ukrainian authorities have become outspoken enemies of the Orthodox faith.

Earlier, Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council (NSDC) imposed sanctions on several clergymen of the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC), in particular, on Metropolitan Pavel (Lebed) - the vicegerent of the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra monastery. In all, about a dozen UOC clergymen, as well as one of Ukraine’s richest businessmen, former Verkhovna Rada member Vadim Novinsky, fell under the newly-introduced sanctions.

"The current Ukrainian authorities have openly become enemies of Christ and the Orthodox faith. This is how the entire Christian world should treat them," Medvedev wrote on his Telegram channel on Friday.

"The Satanists in Kiev have cracked down on the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church. They are looking for links with the Russian world, they are taking away church properties, and they beat up clerics and parishioners."

He recalled that the persecution of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church had begun much earlier, when Ukraine’s previous president, Pyotr Poroshenko "sacrificed the UOC and the Minsk agreements for the sake of his failed re-election."

"However, Ukraine’s dwarfish presidents have never been distinguished by the strength of their faith, money being their sole object of worship. The question is not about them, but about their fundamental rights, established by their allegedly democratic constitution. These rights have now been trampled over, while believers are being intimidated with various abominations and forced to go to ostensibly ‘correct’ churches," he said.

Medvedev advised the "Iscariots in Kiev" to remember the following words from the Holy Scripture: "I won't be showing pity on you and I won't be showing compassion. I'm going to turn your own lifestyles against you while your detestable practices remain among you. Then you'll learn that I am the LORD."

Situation around UOC

On Thursday, Ukraine’s president, Vladimir Zelensky, issued a decree to enact a resolution of the National Security and Defense Council on Certain Aspects of the Activities of Religious Organizations in Ukraine and the Application of Personal Special Economic and Other Restrictive Measures (Sanctions), in fact aimed at banning the UOC. In part, he issued orders to submit a bill to parliament on banning "religious organizations affiliated with centers of influence in the Russian Federation," stepping up "measures to identify and counter subversive activities by Russian special services in Ukraine’s religious sphere," and scrutinizing the Charter governing the Ukrainian Orthodox Church for signs of ecclesiastical and canonic links with the Moscow Patriarchate.

Recently, Ukrainian law enforcement agencies conducted a series of raids against UOC churches. There were reports of searches at the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra Monastery, the Archangel Michael’s Zverinets Monastery in Kiev, two monasteries in the Rovno Region, the Sarny diocese, and the Chernovtsy-Bukovina diocese.

The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) claims that "pro-Russian literature and millions in cash," as well as "materials denying the existence of Ukraine" were found.

On Friday, the SBU announced there had been another raid and investigative actions at nine UOC sites in the Zhytomyr, Transcarpathian and Rovno regions. The Metropolitan of the Kirovograd diocese of the UOC was charged with allegedly coordinating with Patriarch Kirill in "the spreading pro-Kremlin views" in the region. And the vicar of the UOC’s Kiev Metropolitanate was accused of distributing Russian literature.