Journalist and TV presenter Savik Shuster believes that the Moscow Patriarchate has acted against Ukraine since 2014. He said this in an interview with Alesya Batsman, editor-in-chief of the GORDON publication.

“If the church is led by these – what to call them? – The FSB is engaged in anti-Ukrainian propaganda and sets the people against Ukraine, these people must be taken, detained, shown to all the people. And to convince the parishioners of this church, because they still exist, that what these so-called priests do, they have nothing to do with faith at all. They are agents, they are subversives, they are the real enemies of Ukraine. It must be done correctly, it must be done deliberately, it cannot be done simply by such statements to the left and to the right. Yes? I’m just saying there are things that are dangerous,” Shuster said.

He recalled that during the war, people often “receive more information from each other than from some more or less verified sources”, so resonant things “should be done very delicately, correctly, on time.”

“I’ll tell you frankly now, since we’ve already started talking again. I have always been afraid to touch on religious topics. Because I understood that they are very explosive, they can really split people. Here the language question split in due time very strongly. Any program on the topic of language split. The theme of faith splits even more. It is the most dangerous of all topics, ”the TV presenter emphasized.

At the same time, in his opinion, the Moscow Patriarchate has acted against Ukraine since 2014. But, the journalist noted, he does not believe that even then it was necessary to “deal with” him.

“You see, the Kyiv Lavra is a symbol of Orthodoxy. And so it is, in general, delicate work. It’s subtle. It can’t just be, you know, hacked off the shoulder. This is a subtle matter,” Shuster explained.