We are witnessing a period of activism and civic engagement unprecedented in my generation. Liberals have picked up the placards they put away for most of the Obama era and remembered how to march. Health care, womenā€™s rights, the rights of refugees, science-based public policy ā€” these are all issues the left is trying to influence from the street.

But this activism is marked by a bizarre blind spot, a mismatch in passion versusĢżimpact. More than 125,000 people marched to get Donald Trump to reveal his tax returns. At the same time, practically no one is protesting US policies enabling a man-made that could kill 7 million people before the end of the year.

In 2015, Houthi rebels nominally aligned with Iran deposed Yemeni President Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi and took control of most of the country, promptingĢżSaudi Arabia to organize a military coalition to drive them out of power. sides of grave human rights abuses, but the coalitionā€™s actions are particularly heinous. In addition to systematically targeting and , it has Yemen from the sea and bombed , bridges and highways needed to move food throughout a country that imports 90% of what it eats.

As a result, could starve to death if they do not receive emergency food aid in the coming months. Altogether 17 million people are severely food insecure ā€” fully 60% of the countryā€™s population. There are practically no reserves of food in the country; the few shipments of humanitarian assistance that enter the country ā€œ.ā€

Shouldnā€™t America Do Something?

The problem is that the United StatesĢżis doing something: Saudi jets refuel at airborne American tankers, then drop American-made bombs on targets sometimes based on American intelligence. Even while these airstrikes , the (and theĢż, who also sells the Saudis billions in arms) provides political cover and squashes inquiries at the United Nations.

This war could not be fought at its current intensityĢżwithout this behind-the-scenes participation of US military and intelligence. Our government is almost certainly .

Two presidential administrations in a row have supported Saudi Arabia with remarkable consistency. President Barack Obama briefly and belatedly arms sales and sharing of intelligence after several especially egregious airstrikes on civilian targets, but now President Trump has scrapped these restrictions. He even sent Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis to Congress to propose in a Saudi-led offensive to take the largest rebel-held port, Hudaydah.

The UN and leading humanitarian organizations have against this, claiming this would snap the last supply chain of food into Yemen and tip the country into famine. Itā€™s time for Americans to start protesting this atrocity with something like the passion we did for, say, Trumpā€™s ban on Muslim refugees. It is deeply disheartening to see liberals march with signs comparing the Muslim ban to the heartless rejection of Jewish refugees from Adolf Hitlerā€™s Germany while saying nothing about US complicity in policies that could kill as many Yemenis as Jews perished in the Holocaust.

Liberals may be so silent because speaking out against the war in Yemen would simply not be as cathartic and satisfying as protesting Trumpā€™s attacks on righteous Obama policies. It requires painful self-reflection about the huge dip in activity by the anti-war left during the Obama administration. It forces us reflect on much deeper, darker trends in US foreign policy that remain consistent across Democratic and Republican administrations.

The fact is that this war shouldnā€™t make sense to conservatives either. Especially to the millions who believed Trump when he said heā€™d keep us out of Middle Eastern wars that serve no clear national interest. Or for those who agreed with him that the US should be able to dictate terms to weaker treaty allies.

But here we are, getting wagged again by the Saudi Arabian tail. One likely reason why the US is supporting horrific Saudi policies is that they needed assurance we arenā€™t abandoning them after the signing of the nuclear deal with Iran. WashingtonĢżis trying to show its anti-Iran backbone, even though is modest compared to its role in Iraq or Syria. While Saudi Arabia is unquestionably key to the geopolitical order the US has constructed in the Middle East, one wonders if it is worth catering to their every violent wish if that means violating the top US policy priority in Yemen: winning the war against al-Qaeda.

In addition to the awful things about the Saudi operation listed above, it is also a boon to al-Qaeda in the Arab Peninsula (AQAP). The Houthi rebels are Shia Muslims and hence bitter enemies of the Sunni fanatics in AQAP. This means that AQAP has a common enemy with the anti-Houthi coalition of Saudi Arabia and the forces loyal to deposed President Hadi (who has designated by the US Treasury Department as Specially Designated Global Terrorists who support al-Qaeda).

This has led to concerns that might end up in terrorist hands and that (the latter claim is by al-Qaeda itself).

And yet, absurdly, Trump initially proposed participating in the Saudi campaign under the passed by Congress in 2001 against al-Qaeda. This essentially translates to: ā€œI donā€™t need to ask Congress for permission to bomb the Houthis because I already have permission to bomb their enemies.ā€ Trump adds the injury of destroying constitutional limits on executive power to the insult of betraying populist conservative hopes for a ā€œno quagmireā€ foreign policy.

There should be bipartisan disgust over the horrific human costs and undemocratic nature of US support for the Saudi operation in Yemen. But instead of a movement that could draw from across the political spectrum, we have no movement at all. ĢżHow can we change that in time to make a difference for millions of Yemenis being meaninglessly victimized by US policies?

What to Do in Yemen?

First of all, we need to identify the actors who actually determine US policy in Yemen. Congress has mostly been left on the sidelines of this undeclared war. But organized citizen engagement could help a small, bipartisan group of senators to use what few levers of influence are available to them.

Chris Murphy and Rand Paul sponsored , which would block upcoming Ģżunless they can demonstrate they are protecting civilians, allowing movement of humanitarian aid and targeting international terrorists. While the sales in question are just a drop in the bucket of the US-Saudi Arabia arms trade, blocking them would send a powerful signal to Riyadh and the White House.

Meanwhile, by Todd Young and Ben Cardin calls for US leadership on finding diplomatic solutions to famine-inducing conflicts in Yemen, Somalia, South Sudan and Nigeria, and to organize a funding coalition to rapidly cover the UNā€™s $5.6-billion shortfall in humanitarian assistance for these countries.

Your senators should be in on this group as well, but theyā€™re unlikely to do so unless you let them know it has a constituency. You may be surprised by their response. I recently attended a foreign policy talk by Maineā€™s Senator Angus King and asked him what he thinks about arming and assisting the Saudis, expecting a pat answer. Instead, King looked at me gravely and : ā€œI think itā€™s a mistake ā€¦ We canā€™t be complicit. We canā€™t say later that we didnā€™t know what the jet fuel was used for.ā€

The composition of this group of senators, which includes the earnest liberal Murphy, semi-libertarian Paul, reliable leftist Al Franken and social conservative Young, offers some encouragement that this movement could get support across the political spectrum. Because weā€™re going to need a ā€œbig tentā€ on this issue if weā€™re going to get through to the one man who really calls the shots here: President Trump.

Trump and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson have already demonstrated that decision-making. Another National Mall-filling liberal march might make an impression on Congress, but probably wonā€™t budge the president from a position that seems to stem from his ferocious anti-Iranianism. But what if he felt pressure at the same time from Republicans for helping the terrorists and getting us into another expensive Middle Eastern mess? How much flak would Trump be willing to take for this policy before he threw the Saudis under the bus?

Hoping for a movement that could encompass “Make America Great Again and Indivisible” may sound absurd. But itā€™s not as absurd as helping starve millions of Yemenis to death for no discernible reason. What it will take is for Americans from both sides to test whether their convictions are good for something besides flogging their opponents. Can liberals build a mental bridge to Yemenis victimized by both Obama and Trump and activate the empathy they showed toward Muslim refugees? Will conservatives recognize the danger that an undeclared war against our enemiesā€™ enemies poses to constitutional government and to winning the war that actually counts ā€” the war against al-Qaeda?

The clock is ticking.

The views expressed in this article are the authorā€™s own and do not necessarily reflect 51³Ō¹Ļā€™s editorial policy.

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The so-called ā€œlanguage questionā€ has been a recurring motif of political conflict in Ukraine for the past 25 years. Too often, debates between proponents of obligatory Ukrainizatsiya (Ukrainianization) and of the two-language (Ukrainian and Russian) status quo have veered into culture war.

The question has proven particularly dangerous during the actual war in eastern Ukraine that began in spring, 2014. In the first days after the victory of the Euromaidan revolution, the Ukrainian parliament repealed the Regional Languages Law of 2012, which the disgraced ex-president, Viktor Yanukovich, had pushed through to placate his Russian-speaking political base in the countryā€™s southeast.

The repealing of the lawā€™s certainly would not ā€œmake Russian illegalā€ā€”it would only have limited its use in some public functionsā€”but this is how it was interpreted in much of the restive Donbas Region, which was deeply upset by the ascension of pro-Western revolutions in Kiev. The acting president vetoed the repeal, understanding the disastrous effect the repeal was having on public opinion in the east. But the damage was done.

Indeed, language rights became one of the main fronts of the Moscow-backed Russian Spring project that engulfed Donetsk and Luhansk. Living at the time in distant Vladivostok, I recall radio appeals to Russians to join the Donbas ā€œmilitiasā€ to defend their common native tongue. In the early days of the war, Moscow-based journalist . They railed against the supposed humiliation of having Ukrainian imposed on them: ā€œWe couldnā€™t read the labels on our medicine bottles!ā€

But while deep ideological fissures opened up in Ukraine, Kiev set the dangerous language question aside. No serious restrictions were imposed, and those regions of the Donbas under government control continued their familiar Russian-speaking existence. However, this hands-off approach ended several weeks ago, when President Petro Poroshenkoā€™s party introduced a draft law that would mandate near-total s, local government, print and online media, and even in stores and restaurants.

To judge the wisdom of such a move is necessary to answer several questions: Is Ukrainizatsiya a just policy? And is it necessary at this time of profound national crisis for Ukraine?

Language of the Aggressor

The history of Luhansk Oblast (province) in the Donbas, where I presently live, offers a compelling prism of which to answer this question. Most of the initial settlers who braved nomadic and Turkish raids in this dangerous steppe frontier were Ukrainian peasants. But they were joined by fugitive serfs from overcrowded central Russia, Don Cossacks and Balkan refugees from the Ottoman Empire.

The proportion of ethnic Russians increased greatly with the opening of vast coal reserves and industrialization in the provinceā€™s south. But when the Bolsheviks seized the region in 1917, it was an ethnic and linguistic mosaic in which Ukrainian played a central role.

The Bolshevikā€™s language policy lurched wildly from enforced promotion of Ukrainian in the 1920s (to the deep resentment of some Russian-speaking proletarians) to , which came on the heels of mass death of Ukrainian peasant farmers in the of 1933. This was followed by moderate promotion under Khrushchev and finally to Russification as an instrument of pan-Soviet unity. In 1972, the wrote bitterly of the disappearance of his national language and culture in the Donbas, as Russian was imposed as the exclusive language of educational and professional advancement. Calling out the imperial nature of this policy was enough to get Tikhiy sent to a Russian prison camp, where he perished.

Today, Russian thoroughly dominates in Luhansk province, and not only in the separatist-controlled industrial cities. Soviet language policy obscured Ukrainian linguistic and cultural character even in the rural north, where its roots run deepest.

Thus, reviving the Ukrainian language in Luhansk Oblast, as in much of the countryā€™s east and south, is a fitting and justified answer to this earlier, deliberate marginalization.

But there must be limits. Repressive Soviet policies helped the Russian language expand its range in eastern Ukraine but did not establish it there. It can be legitimately considered one of the indigenous languages of the Donbas, spoken by a significant proportion of the regionā€™s pioneers and their descendants.

Having asserted that Ukrainizatsiya would be a just policy if it recognized the legitimate place of Russian in the cultural mosaic, we need to understand whether Ukraine needs it right now.

For proponents of the new law, pro-Russian separatism in the Donbas shows the need to eliminate mixed loyalties and mixed identities once and for all. They believe that the dominance of the ā€œā€ makes that regionā€™s residents susceptible to Russian world ideology.

This concept legitimizes Moscowā€™s main propaganda point that Russian speakers comprise an organic, transnational community with shared identity and interests. But Ukrainian realities test this assertion. A huge proportion of the volunteers that rushed to the frontline to fight the separatists and their Russian allies speak the ā€œlanguage of the aggressor.ā€ So do most of the pro-unity local residents I have met. Speaking Russian does not obstruct them from being patriots of Ukraine if their hearts so direct them.

Furthermore, of Ukraineā€™s , and express their uncompromising support for Ukrainian unity in the Russian language. Indeed, sweeping Ukrainizatsiya of these news outlets would directly contradict another key policy goal for Kiev: combatting the dominance of Russian media (especially television) in the Donbas. It is crucially important that Ukraine keep open lines of communication to Donbas residents. Will limiting the ability of Ukrainian media to reach out to them in their native language assist in that goal?

Ukrainian and Russian are related languages, perhaps as close as Spanish and Italian. Nonetheless, gaining fluency in Ukrainian would take at least a year of concerted effort. In wartime, many Donbas residents will not find the opportunity to dig into their textbooks, especially internal refugees struggling to eke out a survival wage, or frontline civilians taking refuge in basement bomb shelters.

Put bluntly, this is not the time for Ukraine in the battle for hearts and minds.

How Much Coercion?

But the problem goes far beyond timing. All efforts to revive national languages require some amount of coercion. Experience shows that in moderate amounts coercion can produce more benefits than it incites resentment and resistance, such as requirements that all foreign films shown in theaters must be dubbed into Ukrainian. Many of my acquaintances from eastern Ukraine (and even Kiev) initially resisted this requirement, but with time realized that it was helping them achieve passive bilingualism and communicate better with Ukrainian speakers.

The process should nurture and restore Ukrainian language and culture where it has been extirpated, especially in the Donbas. But it should not seek to tear out Russian identity that has roots in the regionā€™s black earth and chalk hills.

But there is nothing measured about the coercion in the draft law on Ukrainizatsiya. It is downright punitive. No transition period is anticipated for Russian speaking public officials or educators, and fines will be imposed immediately, theoretically on a daily basis, for failure to employ Ukrainian. ā€œLanguage inspectorsā€ will help enforce the requirements that the state language be used in government offices, schools and stores. No particular resources will be expended on helping Russian speakers learn Ukrainian, besides the placement of textbooks in public libraries.

The bill shares its punitive character the recent Ukrainian ā€œDe-Communizationā€ laws. They approached the task of a long-needed honest reckoning with totalitarianismā€™s dark legacy by smashing and scrubbing out all things Soviet while breathlessly . No particular public dialogue or debate was involved, no real attempt to engage or persuade those immersed in Soviet nostalgia. This was history by diktat, which is to say entirely in line with the way history was treated in the Soviet Union.

The proposed Ukrainizatsiya bill also echoes early coercive Soviet policy in method and intent, aiming to drive what millions of eastern Ukrainians consider their native language out of the public sphere and ā€œinto the kitchen.ā€ Such a sharp change from the permissive linguistic status quo of the past 25 years will release anti-Kiev and pro-separatism political energies at the worst possible time.

I have seen after three years of war that many Donbas residents who voted for separatism in the unofficial referenda of May 2014 are now prepared to accept Ukraine if it can provide stability, relative law and order and economic recovery. But a language policy that reaches into nearly every aspect of their lives could re-ignite dormant ideological anger. Even many pro-unity residents are frustrated that the government in Kiev is stoking culture war rather than focusing on policies that address their sharp decline in quality of life.

Getting Ukrainizatsiya Right

The proposed law needs a dramatic overhaul, which re-focuses it on an achievable goal: assuring the proficiency of all Ukrainian citizens in their state language. That goal will be much better achieved by establishing a realistic and implementable program and funding it accordingly. The core of the Ukranizatsiya strategy should not be fines for offenders, but investment in Ukrainian language adult education. The latter is practically absent in the Donbas today.

That said, the right dose of obligation and coercion must be found. It is no longer a sustainable social contractĢżin Ukraine that the east can be a Russian-speaking enclave and de facto ignore the state language. The very least that should be expected of all Ukrainian citizens is functional bilingualism.

But Russian speakers are likely to be far less alarmed and alienated by Ukrainizatsiya if they think it will respect the limits of their linguistic-cultural identity. The process should nurture and restore Ukrainian language and culture where it has been extirpated, especially in the Donbas. But it should not seek to tear out Russian identity that has roots in the regionā€™s black earth and chalk hills.

Ukainizatsiya is too important and worthy a cause to be reduced to an instrument of culture war. It must serve and not undermine Ukraineā€™s identity as a pluralistic, multiethnic republic.

The views expressed in this article are the authorā€™s own and do not necessarily reflect 51³Ō¹Ļā€™s editorial policy.

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ā€œI call on those who cry out that we should restore justice with our fists: Our country is ailing, but we must treat her in a way that does not kill the patient ā€¦ We must call a sin a sin, but love the sinner. I speak of the eternal. Think of that, so that you wonā€™t be ashamed to look in the eyes of your children, so that you wonā€™t need to stand before the icon and cry ā€˜Lord, what have we done?ā€™ā€

The Orthodox priest Giorgiy GulyaevĢżĢżon March 1, 2014, to a large, restive crowd in the Eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk. He was addressing a meeting attended by both sides of the rapidly polarizing city and directed his words to the pro-Russian separatists in the crowd, who comprised the majority. They roared their disapproval at him, and not long after his speech a crowd of separatists led by the new ā€œpeopleā€™s mayorā€ swept Father Giorgiy and their opponents from the square and seized the city administration. The Ukrainian yellow and blue was torn down and the Russian tricolor raised in its place. Ukraine had lost Donetsk. But he had done what he could.

Father Giorgiyā€™s words were those of a Ukrainian agonized equally by his countryā€™s ā€œailmentā€ā€”the divisive Euromaidan revolution in Kiev that brought a pro-Western government to power and alienated millions in the countryā€™s east, and by the ā€œtreatmentā€ being stoked by Russiaā€”armed separatism.

Throughout the war in the Donbass Father Giorgiy attempted to hold his ground as faultlines open beneath him. He is a sincere Ukrainian patriot who passionately serves in the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate (UOC-MP), considered by many to be Russiaā€™s cultural beachhead in the country. From his chapel in the Donetsk Metal Works he condemned both incoming and outgoing artillery strikes. He criticized radical Ukrainian nationalists who seized ā€œMuscoviteā€ churches and also separatists who paraded Ukrainian POWs through the streets of Donetsk.

In so many ways the center that Father Giorgiy occupied could not hold. But he shows how an ethical man can navigate seemingly intractable conflicts. One is being waged with artillery by the Russian-backed separatists and the Ukrainian Army in the rusting industrial cities of the Donbass, with horrific human consequences: almost 10,000 dead ā€”2,000 civilian, at a very conservative estimateā€”and as many as 1.7 million people at the peak of the conflict and perhaps a million to Russia and other countries The other conflict is within Ukrainian Orthodoxy and involves questions of loyalty, patriotism and religious liberty.

Only God to Hope For

Father Giorgiy at his chapel in Donetsk Ā© Giorgiy Gulyaev

Before the war, Father Giorgiy was both priest and press secretary for the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in Donetsk. The Moscow Patriarchate (MP) is recognized by the Orthodox world and warily shares Ukraine with its rival, the unrecognized but increasingly popular Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kyivan Patriarchate (UOC-KP). The former dominates the countryā€™s east and the latter its center and west. Long before the war relations were strained, with the patriarchates trading charges of ā€œschismaticsā€ and ā€œMoscow agents.ā€ĢżBut Father Giorgiy could complacently enjoy the MPā€™s majority status in Donetsk, while demonstrating an unusual openness to other confessions and secular journalists.

Father Giorgiy watched the Euromaidan revolution in in the winter of 2013-14 with alarm. Support for the revolutionary movement in the eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions of the Donbass was ā€”aroundĢż17%ā€”but Donetsk did have its own Maidan peopled by many liberal journalists Gulyaev had befriended. The revolutionā€™s victory in February was rapidly followed by Russiaā€™s annexation of Crimea and its subversive Russian Spring project, which fostered separatism in the Donbass.

Many UkrainiansĢżĢżthe Moscow Patriarchate of welcoming the Russian Spring and offering aid and comfort to separatists and their Russian accomplices. Father Giorgiy bridles at the accusation, claiming that MP leadership did everything they could to support the legal authorities in Donetsk, whose paralysis helped hand the city over to the separatists.

His own actions at the pro-unity rally in March 2015 demonstrate courage in the face of the armed takeover, but such gestures were not enough. Thousands of pro-unity residents fled after the city was christened capital of a separatist Donetsk Peopleā€™s Republic (DPR). But Father Giorgiy continued to serve at his chapel, crossing the emptying city every day under artillery fire. The church became a haven from the nerve-shattering strain and ideological radicalization of wartime Donetsk. After the factory was shelled and several workers killed, he shielded the churchā€™s entrance with stacked cement barriers.

ā€œWe learned to pray through the sound of artillery fire and ask each other for forgiveness at every service, hoping that we would meet again the next week,ā€ heĢżĢżin 2014. Knowing that his congregation included both fervent separatists and quiet supporters of Ukrainian unity, Gulyaev fostered a distance from the world that allowed them to pray together in harmony. He notes with pride that not a single of his congregants took up arms in the Donbass conflict.

In regular Facebook posts and interviews for the Ukrainian and Russian press Gulyaev offered a glimpse into the war-wracked city and a compassionate, consistent denunciation of the conflictā€™s brutality. ā€œI remember the shock and crash of the outgoing artillery when the DPR began firing on the Ukrainian forces,ā€ he told me in October. ā€œWe curled up on the floor and prayed. ā€˜God have mercy on us, God have mercy on us ā€¦ā€™ There was no one else to hope for.ā€

The DPR artillery incited answering fire from the Ukrainian army. But as the destructive shelling by Ukrainian forces dragged on for months, Father Giorgiy came to see it as ā€œsenseless ā€¦ incomprehensibleā€ and a crucial factor in driving Donetsk residents away from Ukraine. ā€œWhen we buried those people [killed in artillery strikes] it was difficult to understand, to explain why they died,ā€ he said in a 2015Ģż. ā€œMy congregants felt that they were being fired on by their own people. And through all of it they considered themselves a part of Ukraine.ā€

He recalls delivering emergency fuel to a psychiatric hospital in Donetsk in the winter of 2014-15, when the two sides pounded each other incessantly with heavy artillery. No DPR positions were nearby, but the hospitalā€™s grounds were cratered and its windows blown out. ā€œOnly by the grace of God was the hospital itself not hit.ā€

But many churches were. The Iversky Monastary wasĢżĢżwhen the nearby Donetsk airport became one of the warā€™s key battlegrounds. Artillery shells burned a new wooden church to the ground in separatist-controlled Horlivka. Dozens of churches would be damaged in the province of Donetsk, the majority in the territories under separatist control. Father Giorgiy was conflicted about informing his congregation of new damages to churches for fear it would inspire some to call for revenge.

Today Donetsk Has Died

Such conditions drove Gulyaev to castigate the revolutionary government in Kiev for de-humanizing the residents of Donetsk. HeĢżĢżon Facebook: ā€œThe solution to the Donbass’ problems is not to fence it off with barbed wire, ā€˜cleanseā€™ and ā€˜disinfectā€™ it. You say you want to build a new Ukraine? It is not enough to tear down monuments to totalitarian rulers, first you must topple your mental idol, which still demands bloody sacrifice. The virus of hatred toward dissent is more dangerous than the dissent itself.ā€

Such jeremiads made some Ukrainians look on Father Giorgiy as a ā€œsecret separatist.ā€ But his coldness toward the DPR authorities earned him enemies there as well, especially after he publicly opposed a decision toĢżĢżUkrainian prisoners of war through the streets. ā€œWhen the first images from that parade appeared online,ā€ he recalls, ā€œI just sat in my empty office in front of my monitor and cried.ā€

Then he wrote with concise rage on Facebook: ā€œToday Donetsk has died.ā€ This harsh judgement would be thrown back at him many times by the Russian and DPR press, which began labelling him a ā€œhidden schismaticā€ and a ā€œUkrainian fascist.ā€

ā€œPeople from both sides require of me that I share their emotions, judge who they judge and curse who they curse. They want to hold me to their preferred, inflexible position,ā€ GulyaevĢżĢżOrthodox Life.Ģżā€œBut it is not my task to simply ā€˜satisfy their religious needs.ā€™ It is my task to witness for the One who gave us the Gospel. [In doing so] I feel that I cannot satisfy either side.ā€

Worship in wartime Ā© Giorgiy Gulyaev

In October 2015, at the urging of his own parishioners, Father Giorgiy finally left Donetsk to join his wife and children on Ukrainian-controlled territory. Divided now by the front line, Gulyaev and his Donetsk congregants try to keep alive the politically neutral, devotional space he created in his church. Most who stayed are now supporters of the unrecognized DPR, but consult by telephone with pro-unity Gulyaev on matters of faith. But he knows the bonds are fraying.

ā€œTime is working against Ukraine,ā€ he told me in an October Skype interview. Donetsk residents grow accustomed to the separatist authorities, saturated as they are in the Russian and DPR media spheres. And living through the shelling of Donetsk plays its role as well, requiring no spin.

Father GiorgiyĢżĢżthat the Moscow Patriarchate is ā€œthe structure which can spiritually bind the Donbass to Ukraine.ā€ He claims that the UOC-MP has resisted efforts by the DPR to turn it into a state church. ā€œIt remains theĢżUkrainianĢżOrthodox Church, in name and practice,ā€ he says. The boundaries of the dioceses have not adapted to the war, with the largest in the Donbass encompassing both Donetsk and Ukrainian-controlled Mariupol. Deeply divided as they are by ideology and geopolitics, he believes that Ukrainians must make their common faith a space for dialogue and reconciliation.

A Bridge or a Faultline?

But many Ukrainians vigorously disagree with Father Giorgiyā€™s characterization of the UOC-MP as a bridge to Ukraine. There isĢżĢżthat certain Moscow Patriarchate priests and lay activists took part in the separatist movement from its earliest days,ĢżĢżto armed Russian mercenaries. MP priests blessed camouflaged separatists at their roadblocks and addressed their congregants at DPR rallies, while members of other religious affiliations facedĢżĢżand abduction. At least four Protestants wereĢżĢżin the earliest days of the war for their ā€œalien faith.ā€

Some figures from the Moscow Patriarchate haveĢżĢżin the construction of the Donetsk/Luhansk Peopleā€™s Republics (LPR) state ideology on the basis of ā€œtraditional valuesā€ and brotherhood with Russia. Ukraine press and social media are full of anecdotal reports that MP priests in government-controlled areas of the Donbass praise the separatist fighters as a bulwark against Western cultural imperialism.

When I asked about separatism in his church, Father Giorgiy offered a cautious criticism: ā€œā€¦ in the Orthodox Church we have one minusā€”our tendency to orient on the official local authorities. When a new [leader] arrives, we assess him for a while, and if he seems to act on some sort of legal basis then we form a relationship with him ā€¦ We are very tied to the land ā€¦We must stay and protect our sacred relics.ā€

But Gulyaev posits that separatist priests are rogues and do not reflect the policy of their church. Kiev-based religious scholar Yuriy ChernomoretsĢż, claiming that the only consistent predictor that a priest would support the DPR is whether he is a veteran of the Soviet Army. Many MP priests, including theirĢż,Ģżare sympathetic to the anti-modern Russian world ideology but do not condone its military-political manifestation in the Peopleā€™s Republics.

Both patriarchates are more or less at peace in the war-torn Donbass, where they both have churches on the ā€œwrongā€ side of the frontlines. In theĢżLuhansk region, the KP bishop in Ukrainian-held territory protects MP churches from hostile takeovers by radical nationalists because he knows that the MP bishop in separatist-held Luhansk will do the same for KP churches.

---

But those sympathies are enough to convince many believers to vote with their feet. Since the start of the war polls indicate that more UkrainiansĢżĢżthemselves with the Kyiv than the Moscow Patriarchate (44% and 21% of all believing Ukrainians, respectively), though this may not reflect actual numbers of churchgoers. Only in the Donbass does the Moscow Patriarchate remain the most common religious affiliation.

But, troublingly, the momentum against the Moscow Patriarchate goes beyond the voluntary choice of Orthodox faithful. MP parishioners in Western Ukraine claim that Kyiv PatriarchateĢż(KP) activists and radical nationalists have attempted ā€œhostile takeoversā€ of 31 churches, sometimes with the support of local police. Representatives of the Kyiv PatriarchateĢżĢżthat this is a peaceful assertion of majority rights, butĢżreportsĢżof kerchiefed babushkas being beaten up by camouflaged nationalists indicate a dark tendency toward violent coercion.

The Moscow Patriarchate has successfully countered hostile takeovers in Ukraineā€™s courts, but has received little sympathy from the government. In fact, aĢżĢżis before Ukrainian parliament that would simplify transfer of churches from one confession to another. If the law is passed anyone who self-identifies as a churchgoer can vote about its future affiliation, raising fears that true parishioners could be outvoted by cooked-up majorities. Besides the Moscow Patriarchate, Ukraineā€™s Jewish, Roman Catholic and Lutheran communities have spoken out against the bill as a threat to religious liberty.

Nor have public figures denounced the violent language sometimes directed at the Moscow Patriarchate by KP leaders, such as the whoĢżsaidĢżthat ā€œWe will bury those who look to the north [Russia] ā€¦ Do not let those who pray in the occupierā€™s tongue deceive you! God hears us, but he will never hear them.ā€ĢżArson attacks on churches have become sadly frequent in Ukraine, mostly, but not exclusively, against the MP. Within a few days of this article being written, both a KP and a MP church were torched in Eastern Ukraine.

Fostering Unity

The Moscow Patriarchate cannot fulfil its stated goal of fostering unity and reconciliation until it addresses the breadth of separatist sympathy within the church. But the MPā€™s most virulent opponents risk widening a sectarian faultline that is spreading deep into Ukraine.

Interestingly, both patriarchates are more or less at peace in the war-torn Donbass, where they both have churches on the ā€œwrongā€ side of the frontlines. In theĢż, the KP bishop in Ukrainian-held territory protects MP churches from hostile takeovers by radical nationalists because he knows that the MP bishop in separatist-held Luhansk will do the same for KP churches, which the republican authorities have eyed for conversion.

Father Giorgiy also offers a personal example. Not only did he decline the many feelers from separatist leaders about making the MP the state church of the DPR. When he finally visited them in the paneled offices they seized from the Ukrainian security services it was to plead for the release of KP and Uniate priests held in basement prisons under suspicion of espionage. Strenuous theological and political differences did not stop him from risking his own freedom to secure that of other Ukrainian citizens and men of God.

One might wish that, like Gulyaev, the churches were united by love and Orthodox values, and not mutual fear and self-interest. But their commitment to maintain religious freedom on both sides of the frontline is nonetheless encouraging. Perhaps it offers a model for Ukraine as a whole: practical reconciliation can begin from shared suffering. The love can come later.

The views expressed in this article are the authorā€™s own and do not necessarily reflect 51³Ō¹Ļā€™s editorial policy.

Photo Credit:Ģż

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