Facebook Removes Trump Propaganda Page After It Was Revealed It Was Run From Ukraine

Wot! No "Russian connections"? Facebook Removes Trump Propaganda Page After It Was Revealed It Was Run From Ukraine:

A Facebook page that backed President Donald Trump and touted American patriotism has been taken down after it was revealed that it was produced by a team based mostly in Ukraine.

The "I Love America" page had more than 1.1 million followers and made constant references to "our country" and "our military" and cross-posted content from jingoistic pro-Trump pages such as "God Bless Donald and Melania Trump and God Bless America".

However, the investigative website Popular Information revealed that the page was in fact run by a team based in Ukraine, with one person in Kazakhstan, one in France, and only one from the United States.

A website that was linked in the "About" section of the page is registered to Andriy Zyuzikov, from the Ukrainian city of Odessa, it added.

It used viral content once used by the Russian-based Internet Research Agency (IRA), which a report by special counsel Robert Mueller concluded had interfered in the 2016 election.

Ukraine: Poroshenko Embraces Orthodox Church as Political Ally - Bloomberg

Ukraine: Poroshenko Embraces Orthodox Church as Political Ally - Bloomberg:

On Dec. 15, Poroshenko attended the unification conference even though the Ukrainian Constitution ensures the separation of church and state. He told the audience of priests that spiritual independence was as important as the political kind. He described the prospective granting of autocephaly as a step toward Ukraine’s decolonization from Russia.

Liveleak.com - Ukrainian Church of the CIA?

Liveleak.com - Ukrainian Church of the CIA?:

After Ukrainian president Poroshenko announced creation of new "united" Ukrainian Orthodox church, Head of unrecognized Ukrainian Orthodox church and close ally of Ukrainian president Poroshenko patriarch Filaret awarded the order of St. Andrew the Apostle, church highest award, to Jack Devine for "support of the independence of Ukraine and the creation of a single local Ukrainian Orthodox Church."

Russia, Ukraine, and the Orthodox Church | Council on Foreign Relations

Russia, Ukraine, and the Orthodox Church | Council on Foreign Relations:

President Poroshenko and the Ukrainian legislature, the Rada, were crucial actors in the move towards a canonically legitimate national Orthodox church. One of the president’s key advisors, Rostyslav Pavleko, was charged with a long-term effort to lead out to the leaders of the world’s Orthodox churches and their home governments to build support for the process that was occurring and the dialogue that was ongoing with the Constantinople patriarch. And so that it was in fact a parliamentary resolution which was cited by the patriarch as one of the triggers for action by Constantinople.

Here's What's Really Going on with the Orthodox Church in Ukraine and Russia | The National Interest

Here's What's Really Going on with the Orthodox Church in Ukraine and Russia | The National Interest:

I am starting to get annoyed at the number of commentators who have no background in Orthodox ecclesiology and scant knowledge of Byzantine, Ukrainian and Russian history or about the contemporary realities of religious life throughout the former Soviet Union. These pundits nevertheless feel confident to deliver sweeping pronouncements about the Ukrainian Orthodox Church situation and its ramifications for the Moscow Patriarchate and the Orthodox Church as a whole. At a minimum, one would hope that anyone offering commentary would be well versed in the disputes over the interpretations of the canons of the Council of Chalcedon (451), the controversy over the creation of the Autocephalous Polish Orthodox Church nearly a century ago (in 1924), and the significance of the Pochaiv conclave (which attempted to create a unified Ukrainian Orthodox Church in 1942). Ignorance of these and other developments should be seen as disqualifying to offering anything that purports to be an expert opinion on the matter.

What Really Happened in Constantinople Last Week

What Really Happened in Constantinople Last Week:

Although this decision seems to deal with the remote past, it has a wide array of political and ecclesial implications that apply today. The most important ecclesial implication is that the schism in Ukraine has effectively ended. Those faithful who belonged to unrecognized Orthodox churches are now in communion with the rest of Orthodox churches worldwide. The leaders of the unrecognized churches were restored to their episcopal and priestly degrees. Constantinople thus exercised its right to entertain appeals from outside its own jurisdiction. Constantinople also invited these churches to form a new ecclesial structure, which it intends to grant full independence (or autocephaly) by issuing a founding document, called a Tomos, to it.

Putin Is the Biggest Loser of Orthodox Schism - Bloomberg

Putin Is the Biggest Loser of Orthodox Schism - Bloomberg:

Moscow’s only hope in this lose-lose situation is that Ukrainians will shoot themselves in the foot, as they’ve often done before. To receive autocephaly from the Ecumenical Patriarchate, Ukrainian Christians must unite and select a leader. Whether this will happen depends in part on the two clerics reinstated by the Ecumenical Patriarchate – Filaret, who was excommunicated by the Russian church in 1997 for splitting off the so-called Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kiev Patriarchate, and Metropolitan Makariy, who runs the relatively small Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church.

Ukraine Is Dangerously Close to a Religious War - Bloomberg

Ukraine Is Dangerously Close to a Religious War - Bloomberg:

So far, Russia has taken a hard line. The Moscow Patriarchate has portrayed autocephaly in Ukraine as an unacceptable catastrophe. It has officially condemned Bartholomew’s intention to grant Poroshenko’s request, and has even stopped using Bartholomew’s name in prayers. Given the stakes, it’s entirely possible that factional violence could break out, much as happened when Russia incited parts of Eastern Ukraine to seek independence. To prevent that from happening, Russian and Ukrainian leaders must display wisdom and restraint.

Russia, Ukraine, and the battle for religion | European Council on Foreign Relations

Russia, Ukraine, and the battle for religion | European Council on Foreign Relations:

There are no fewer than three main Orthodox churches in Ukraine. Why so many? One of these, the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church (UAOC), was set up in 1921 but banned under Stalin in 1930. It survived in the diaspora and returned to Ukraine in 1990. The current trio derives from an unsuccessful attempt in 1992, just after Ukraine’s political independence in 1991, to broker a merger between the UAOC and the existing Orthodox hierarchy in Ukraine. The merger created a new church, dubbed the Ukrainian Orthodox Church – Kievan Patriarchate (OUC-KP). But there was resistance on both sides: many in the UAOC refused to join, because they saw the existing Orthodox hierarchy as compromised by the KGB. While most of that compromised hierarchy refused to join the Kievan Patriarchate, for additional reasons of ‘canonicity’, traditionalism, and Russian nationalism. They remained under the Russian church, but relabelled it as the Ukrainian Orthodox Church – Moscow Patriarchate (OUC-MP). Just for good measure, there is a fourth church, the Greek Catholic Church – half-Orthodox and half-Catholic – banned in 1946, but revived in 1989, largely based in western Ukraine.

Keith Gessen: Why not kill them all?: In Donetsk

Keith Gessen: Why not kill them all?: In Donetsk -- LRB 11 September 2014:

When the Maidan protests started in Kiev late last year, Mishin followed them with increasing anxiety. He watched as young men in masks and the insignia of old Ukrainian fascist movements attacked riot police – some of them from the Donetsk area – with Molotov cocktails. He saw governors in the western provinces pulled out of their offices and roughed up by furious crowds. It seemed that the country was descending into chaos. When he heard a rumour that some of the young men from Maidan were headed for Donetsk, he believed it. After work he started taking the bus to the centre of Donetsk to stand with the protesters who called themselves ‘anti-Maidan’. Some of them waved Russian flags; others held up posters of Stalin. But they all wanted to express their disagreement with what was happening in Kiev.

Our 'Enemies' in Ukraine Speak

Our 'Enemies' in Ukraine Speak: America’s ‘news’ media do not let the victims of Ukraine’s civil war — the people who are dying and being driven out from the southeastern regions of that country by the new Ukrainian Government — speak, and tell their story. Scenes will therefore be posted below from an admittedly overlong amateur video from southeastern Ukraine, in which they have been allowed to tell their story. This is being done here since U.S. ‘news’ media apparently don’t consider it something that you would want to know, and since you should be allowed to judge for yourself whether it is or not, and to judge why it’s not being reported on the ‘news’ sources that our ‘democracy’ offers to ‘inform’ America’s public about public affairs.

Have We joined Satan’s Side? - A Russian Orthodox Church Website

Have We joined Satan’s Side? - A Russian Orthodox Church Website: In reality, war does not begin when people start shooting at one another. It begins when certain convictions, upsurges in awareness, or news darken people’s reason and they stop seeing what is most important in those near them. They stop understanding that within the person near them – or not near them but, relatively speaking, “on the other side of the barricade” – there is much more to love than to hate.

Something terrible is happening to us now, when we stop seeing in our neighbor that which is most important, profound, and authentic. As a result, Satan is running the show. We are only giving occasions for the demons to rejoice, for their revelry, when, during our Pascha, we say “Christ is Risen!” to someone, but at the same time write terrible things about others on Facebook and rejoice that someone has “knocked off” someone else, and so forth. Hell is triumphant.