UNITED NATIONS, March 14. /TASS/. Kiev’s plans to take away the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra from the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church are raising the risk that Ukraine will face an intense outbreak of internal fratricidal confrontation, Russia’s envoy to the UN Vasily Nebenzya said on Tuesday.
"The Kiev regime continues its fight with the canonical Orthodox church in Ukraine, which doesn’t even have any formal link to Russia. The situation is only getting worse. In addition to gangster-style takeovers of Orthodox churches and parishes across Ukraine, there are now plans to take away the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra, the key sanctuary, from the Ukrainian Orthodox Church," he said at a meeting of the UN Security Council that Russia convened to discuss Russophobia in Ukraine. "The regime of Zelensky is set to do that on March 28. That move is raising the risk of an unheard-of escalation of an internal Ukrainian fratricidal confrontation".
"I want our Western colleagues to hear about this from us today. It’s not too late to call the Kiev regime to order, and it is in your power to do so," he went on to say.
"What is happening now in Ukraine is, essentially, a total ban on the Russian language. Since the fall of last year, a complete ban on the study of Russian in schools, even as a foreign language, has been added to the previously adopted laws, the diplomat said. "Our former Western partners do not react to all this, promoting the principles of diversity and protection of national and cultural identity only at home. The agencies that are pro-Western or largely made up of representatives of these countries do not react.".