On the evening of October 11, the Holy synod of the Russian orthodox church of the Moscow Patriarchate announced the election of Metropolitan Tikhon (Shevkunov) as the head of the so-called Crimean metropolis, which was illegally subordinated directly to the Russian orthodox church last year by the aggressor. At the same time, “after 43 years of service,” Metropolitan Lazar, who had supported the aggressor in every possible way since the beginning of the occupation, was “retired with full security”; at the same time, as occupiers-controlled “media channels” wrote, “yesterday he was holding scheduled meetings and conferences”.
The “Crimean dreams” of Metropolitan Shevkunov of Pskov and Porkhov were no particular secret, nor was his closeness with the Kremlin dictator for at least two decades. In 2003, it was Tikhon who accompanied Putin on a trip to the United States to carry out a large-scale political provocation with the Russian orthodox church Abroad and its “reunification” with the Moscow Patriarchate. We wrote in March that although evil tongues have long called Putin’s favorite with an equally strange and deliberate “love for other people’s children” as a candidate for the role of the new Moscow Patriarch, until 2018 Tikhon did not manage a separate diocese, the leadership of which was at least five years old for a candidate for patriarch is needed.
We wrote that, as there are rumors in occupied Crimea, Shevkunov’s next step to the patriarchal throne is the “Crimean Metropolis” for the departure of “veteran” Lazar (Shvets) to the “other best world”, and “in fact, the main intrigue is the question – will the Russians wait for intelligence services will “take the natural course of things” or will “accelerate the processes.” It is now obvious that the elderly collaborator Lazar has so far been treated quite “humanely” and his magnificent funeral has not been organized in the current tense situation.
At the same time, the occupiers’ propaganda states that the so-called Crimean Metropolis, performed by Shevkunov, will become the “de facto center” for further provocations against Orthodoxy in Ukraine. Tikhon and his immediate Kremlin commanders naturally harbor criminal intentions against religious harmony, but regarding the “main center” it is worth predicting a soon unprecedented “struggle under the altars” for the patriarchal throne and assessing all subsequent events in the “spiritual life” of the occupiers in this light.
