This was reported on Epiphany Dumenko’s Facebook page.
Indeed, the Day of the Baptism of Rus has long been a headache for structures that have gone into schism. After all, no matter how hard they tried (even with state support from the times of the Poroshenko regime), they never managed to show the massive nature of their march. Against the background of the Procession of the UOC, it looked scandalous, since on the one hand, hundreds of thousands of believers took to the streets of Kyiv, and on the other, only a few thousand (although there were attempts to artificially “raise” the indicators; in some cases it got to the point of ridiculousness – for example, when the media loyal to the schismatics presented a photo of the procession of the UOC as a march of supporters of schismatic organizations). It is clear that this discredited both the aforementioned structures and allegations of the alleged quantitative superiority of their flock over the flock of the canonical Church (which, by the way, the schismatics have been trying for several years to “prove” on paper using the mechanism of commissioned opinion polls).
This year, the problem became especially acute for the OCU. In the context of the arrival of Patriarch Bartholomew, disgrace, as usual, was impossible for the schismatics. Since the insignificance of their procession on July 28 would also hit the authority of the head of the Phanar. Based on this, the “OCU” decided, under the pretext of quarantine measures, to abandon the traditional event on the Day of the Baptism of Rus.
