George Weigel on the Ukraine
Familiar talking points to regular readers

• Reminds me of the first East Slavs (broadly speaking, Russians) I knew, WWII exiles from Galicia. Same party line about the Ukraine. (Cyrillic, iconostasis and onion dome but they swore they weren’t Russian.)
• Weigel is a classic Russophobe, amped with the old Cold War scare?
• The UGCC over there was heroic.
• The Orthodox in that story were Soviet puppets.
• That said... a micro-state, UGCC majority, based in Lvov (old Galicia) would make sense.
• Because most of the Ukraine is Russia.
• The UGCC is negligible in most of the Ukraine. Most people, like in Great Russia, are Soviet-bred secular; the churchgoing minority is deadlocked between the Russian Orthodox and an opportunistic schism from the Russian Orthodox, not in the Orthodox communion, backed covertly by the US to attack Russia. (Former president Yushchenko is a member.)
• The western Ukraine, UGCC = Eastern Novus Ordo. No thanks.
• I hate Orthodox anti-Westernism but at the same time don’t want to see the mighty Russian Orthodox Church reduced to Eastern Novus.

From Ad Orientem.