Patriarch Kirill accuses neighbors of Russia, Ukraine of trying to divide countries' people by lies
MOSCOW. March 9 (Interfax) - Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia has strongly condemned external forces for trying to divide the people of Russia and Ukraine.
"The issue of Russian-Ukrainian relations has now become part of the big or, as they now say, geopolitics, and one of the purposes of this geopolitics is to weaken Russia, which has become a strong, a really mighty country. But how ugly and mean it is to use brotherly people to achieve these geopolitical goals, how terrible it is to set these people against their brothers, how terrible it is to arm them so that they start fighting against their brothers, with whom they have one blood and one faith!" the patriarch said on Wednesday after a liturgy in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior.
Calling Russians and Ukrainians one strong people, the patriarch said that "the neighbors who were scared by this strength started doing everything to divide these people." All those who are doing that are enemies of Russia and Ukraine, "and that means they are against God's will, which is always aimed at peace, at brotherhood, at love," the patriarch said.
"The enemy of the human race is throwing lies into the relations between our peoples through specific people, through specific associations of people," Patriarch Kirill said. "Where the devil is, there are always lies, and today a huge amount of lies are being disseminated, there is also this new fashionable word fake, as a synonym of a lie. These are not fakes, these are not tricks, these are regular devilish lies," Patriarch Kirill said.
In the olden days, when divided Russian principalities were experiencing internal strife between themselves, the church, including Sergius of Radonezh, prayed for the unity of Holy Rus, Patriarch Kirill said. He called on people today to follow the example of Sergius of Radonezh by praying "that no forces can divide our people."