Historian, publicist and religious scholar Nikolai Mitrokhin commented on the searches of the SBU in the UOC. He wrote about this on his Facebook page.

“Looking for saboteurs in other people’s beds at night, breaking down doors with a sledgehammer right off the bat is a wonderful and exciting experience. Much easier and more pleasant (albeit meaningless) than to figure out and disarm real traitors and saboteurs in their ranks. Let them still be dozens, if not hundreds,” Mitrokhin said.

The religious scholar also added that “searching for dirt in church libraries and diocesan archives, or funds in church safes, is much safer and easier than opening the caches of “security firms” or financial records of numerous mafias that exist in almost every region of the country. Presenting half-naked people or confiscated children’s Bibles and catechisms in Russian to the public is more fun than showing trophies from Svatovo or Kremennaya. What dashing PR people in uniform do.