Last week, the Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church announced a number of personnel changes, apparently carried out by Patriarch Kirill on the Kremlin’s orders.
Among other things, it was announced that Metropolitan Hilarion of Donetsk and Mariupol (Roman Shukalo) would be “retired” and transferred “to the Simferopol diocese to live there, receiving support from the Donetsk diocesan administration.”
Hilarion’s place has been announced as Metropolitan Vladimir (Mikhail Samokhin), a native of the Ryazan region, who had previously been listed by the aggressor as the head of the Primorsky Metropolitanate in Vladivostok since 2018, and who is referred to in Russian church-related media as Patriarch Kirill’s “crisis manager.”
The reasons for the “Simferopol retirement” for the ethnic Ukrainian Illarion are not particularly hidden: this is that he “could not take a clear position on many pressing issues that worried his Donetsk flock,” and that it was allegedly “psychologically difficult for him to manage the Donetsk diocese,” which he, however, had been doing since 1996, for many years quite satisfying the Kremlin.
It is characteristic that 73-year-old Illarion was listed as a member of the Synod of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church until 2023, and to this day his Donetsk diocese publicly recognizes its canonical affiliation with Kyiv.
It is obvious that the Kremlin is now planning the same church scam in the East of Ukraine that it previously carried out in Crimea, with the “complete subordination” of the Donetsk and Gorlovka dioceses directly to Moscow, for which Illarion’s cooperation with the occupiers was probably considered “insufficient”, which is why he was “sent into retirement” two years before the “canonical term”.
On this occasion, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate decided to stage a public “rebellion on its knees”, publicly condemning Illarion’s “transfer”, and on this occasion, the “Crimean” propagandists of the aggressor were hastily set on it, hastily recalling all the “mortal sins” to Illarion and other metropolitans.
Well, the fact that the current “overseer” of Illarion is the “new Crimean Metropolitan” Tikhon has become another Byzantine intrigue from the Kremlin Patriarchate: if there would be some “political problems” with Illarion in Crimea, this will become a headache for Kirill’s “worst friend” in the eyes of the Kremlin curators.
However, the picture of a “hidden Ukrainian” regarding Illarion is quite implausible. As the media wrote, back in 2018, Ukrainian law enforcement officers forbade him to cross the demarcation line and travel to Mariupol.
Also, back in the summer of 2023, the occupiers “re-registered” the Donetsk diocese as a “Russian legal entity” with Illarion at the head, and there was no mention of its belonging to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. How this “Byzantine plot” from the Russian special services will develop further – the near future will show.
