MOSCOW, April 12. /TASS/. The US is largely responsible for provoking the current processes in the world’s Orthodoxy, its aim being to weaken Russia, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov told the media on Wednesday.

"It is convenient for them to create an impression they do not have this information (about the situation around the UOC in Ukraine - TASS). It is the United States that to a large extent provoked the processes afoot in Orthodox Christianity around the world. These processes are extremely complicated, but by and large they pursue the same aim - that of weakening Russia. It’s an anti-Russian course. It’s an attempt to weaken Moscow's influence, the way they see it. All this is behind the US policies, including those with regard to what is happening around the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra," he said in response to a TASS request for a comment on the US Department of State's unwillingness to assess the situation involving the UOC in Ukraine.

During a briefing on April 10 US Department of State deputy spokesperson Vedant Patel failed to answer a question about the seizure of churches and attacks on parishioners of the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC). He said he had not seen such reports and was unable to say anything about that, but was ready to discuss the issue later.

In Ukraine, tensions over the UOC soar every day. Supporters of the schismatic Orthodox Church of Ukraine have been seizing buildings of the canonical Church. Local authorities are depriving the UOC of the right to lease land its buildings stand on. Such decisions were made last week by authorities in Khmelnitsky, Lutsk, and Kamenets-Podolsky. In Ivano-Frankovsk, schismatics seized all UOC churches. The canonical Church has lost all church buildings in Lvov. On April 10, the Rovno regional authorities banned the UOC in the region.