Today has been declared a day of mourning for the Ukrainian soldiers who were killed on the IL-76 military transport plane shot down by Russian separatists. Most of them were from the 25th Dniepropetrovsk paragroopers' brigade.
So on cue, we have a peace vigil and procession last night in Lugansk organized by the Russian Orthodox Church there — which is part of the Moscow Patriarchate.
That all seems well and good, no? Who wouldn't be for peace and carrying the icon of the Mother of God?
Except, I read the write-up of it in the local press, (also here) and while they mentioned the air raid sirens, the shelling, the artillery fire – i.e. the Ukrainian army coming to Lugansk to perform an "ATO" — anti-terrorist operation — because separatists had taken over their town's administrative building a few days early (and tried to take over the airport) — they forgot to write "and the downing of an airplane by separatists, killing 49 soldiers."
Just that little detail…
There might be more somewhere, but in general, the news stories merely talked about "a prayer for peace."
You know, the kind of peace the ROC is sustaining when they allow separatists to attend services in camouflage with their weapons — that's really over the top — and appear with Putin while he's celebrating the annexation of the Crimea.
No, I don't expect the ROC to speak out about gross human rights violations and oppose the war — the ROC is not the Vicaria of Chile.
Given their relationship to the Moscow Patriarchate, I don't think this large public event, covered fully by at least local and regional media, could have occurred without a discussion with Moscow. Some spiritual guidance, you know. In fact, that spiritual guidance is likely deployed as part of the entire maskirovka and propaganda campain in Ukraine, which makes it seem like the ROC is merely praying for peace and hoping there will be an end to bloodshed instead of propping up Putin.
Oh, I realize there are nuances and they aren't in perfect concert, but still. The right thing to do would have been to pray for those soldiers who died on the airplane, too. To mention them — the largest day of mortalities in the war so far.
In fact, it might have been a great day for an ecumenical service — but that would require reaching out to the Uniate Church, and naturally they aren't going to do that.
The Russian Orthodox Church in the Luganshchina has been pressed into service to hold roadside funerals for separatist fighters as well.
This video has to be among the most grim of the war. Under an umbrella in pouring rain, a Russian Orthodox priest sings a funeral prayer — with a sniper standing guard over him. Nearby is a truck, from which some spare coffins have been unloaded. Men walk around shouting instructions, rude journalists film the scene without respect, the priest keeps droning.
All the coffins have some form of the ROC cross on them, but they aren't getting individual grave plots, which is usually the norm.
Instead, a long ditch by the side of the road was dug for them, and they are laid out there end-to-end. Reports say there was a graveyard just across the way there, but for some reason, they didn't put the bodies there properly. Maybe this is a temporary measure?
The film gives new meaning to the literary term pathetic fallacy — the weather seems to have adjusted to the grim scene.
Here are the names — I couldn't make a positive identification on social media because the names are common and there are many multiples:
Sergei Aleksandrovich Stebly
Anatoly Viktorovich Litvinenko
Andrei Pavlovich Levenets
Aleksandr Viktorovich Vasilioglo
Sergei Leonidovich Gorbunov
Andrei Mikhailovich Soloviy
Aleksandr Igorevich Chigirovov
Some journalist should follow up — to see if this film is authentic and if those people are real and what happened to them. TSN ran it, so they must have concluded either that it was authentic or had propaganda value.
The Kremlin-backed separatists are also said to be throwing the dead bodies of their comrades-at-arms in the lake in Slavyansk. This hasn't been confirmed.
And there's another report of hasty mass burials in the woods — with drug vials and needles found nearby. Sorry, I lost the link to that in yet another Firefox crash but I'll be back with it.
I wonder why they are doing this. Possibly, so that no one realizes the separatists are really from Russia — although they made such a show of returning the 33 bodies of Russians the other day. I think it's more likely they don't want the public to know the extent of their losses.
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