During the last 24 hours, Kyiv has been choking in smoke and pollution after fires were started up again in the Chornobyl zone and new ones erupted in the neighboring Zhytomyr Oblast
The authorities have issued assurances that there is no danger from radiation but acknowledge that the air pollution levels in the capital have become dangerously high, temporarily overtaking those even in the world’s most polluted cities.
Cruel luck with nature and unkind winds, or foul play? Why have these fires suddenly occurred and continued for so long? The authorities have acknowledged that two persons have so far been charged with setting fire to dry grass and shrubland. Yet it seems incredible that fires would start in different spots without the work of arsonists, rather than simply careless local farmers being involved.
If this is the case, who is behind the sabotage diverting attention away from the deadly battle to contain the coronavirus, and the war in the Donbas, just before the Easter holidays? In such a situation, where a certain pattern in the spread of the fires seems discernible, speculation about the possible role of enemy agents is totally reasonable and one assumes that the State Security Service is investigating the matter.
While this question awaits an answer, another major and overt provocation is under way which not only poses a danger to the health of Ukraine’s population but appears to be a deliberate political provocation inspired by the Kremlin.
Defying the government’s imposition of strict quarantine conditions because of the coronavirus pandemic, and appeals from the very top that believers celebrate Easter at home and not in church, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church subordinated to the Moscow Patriarchate has called on its adherents to disobey these temporary restrictions.
Moscow’s church in Ukraine has disregarded the fact that the Kyiv Pecherska Lavra religious complex under its control has become the epicenter of the epidemic in Kyiv with around 100 confirmed cases among its monks and religious personnel there, and two deaths from the virus already recorded.
Clearly, this is not simply a reckless action borne out of religious fanaticism, but a deliberate, politically calculated, move to provoke the Ukrainian government with scant regard for the health and lives of the gullible faithful being mobilized for this end. It is not testing, as Moscow’s “religious” proxies would have it, the limits of religious toleration in the country, but instigating civil disobedience that challenges the authority of Ukraine’s government and probes its resolve and firmness.
At the end of the day, being pursued as the coronavirus pandemic is believed to be near peaking, this move is a scarcely disguised act of war against the Ukrainian population and its leadership.
The government is in a difficult position. If the police and force are used to prevent worshippers from heeding the call of their pro-Moscow “pastors” they risk being accused by the Kremlin of human rights violations. On the other hand, the danger from the sudden concentration and mingling of people, especially older ones in the most vulnerable category, threatens to undermine all the serious efforts until now to cope with the pandemic.
Easter is a financially lucrative time for the different Christian churches. If the pro-Moscow one has broken ranks with the others and refuses to display solidarity in confronting the coronavirus, it should be held accountable. Not only legally, if this is somehow possible, but also financially.
The government could, for example, inform the leadership of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church obedient to the Moscow Patriarchate, which is certainly not poor, that it will be held financially responsible for covering the costs of the treatment of all its supporters who contract the coronavirus after attending its Easter church services this Sunday.
Yes, this is supposed to be Good Friday in the Eastern Orthodox Christian calendar. But this is a leap year and is associated with bad luck in this part of the world. For this reason, perhaps it has turned out to be anything but that, and it’s not even Friday the 13th. Still, Easter brings new hope, of good triumphing over evil, and of light emerging from darkness. Fingers crossed and may the truth and justice prevail.
