Future Belarusian Officers Forced To Pray To Relics Of Russian Admiral

Relics of Admiral Ushakov were placed in the Suvorov Military School in Minsk.

The site of the Belarusian Exarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church reports that “a red welcome of the ark with the relics of St. George the Victorious, Demetrios of Soluneia and Feodor Ushakov” was held at the Minsk Suvorov Military School on October 2. The event was held with the participation of the Metropolitan Pavel. The third of the saints, Fedor Ushakov, is a Russian admiral, declared a local saint in Mordovia.

The event was blessed by the Patriarch of Moscow and was held within two frameworks: within the framework of cooperation between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Belarusian Ministry of Defense, and within the framework of the Russian program for “spiritual strengthening of the Russian army”, held by the World Russian People's Council.

According to the plan, these relics will be kept in the temple on the territory of the school, as a gift from the public association “Moscow Suvorov Cadets” and Charity Fund of Holy Martyr Boniface.

Attention should be paid to the donators – the Fund of Martyr Boniface, represented in Minsk by the vice chairman Natalia Mezentseva.

Shortly after the annexation of the Crimea, the Fund of Martyr Boniface presented the same “relics” to the Russian Black Sea Fleet, located in Sevastopol, as well.

Then the Fund went to Ukraine, to the territory of the unrecognized “Republic of Luhansk”, where the fund managers – the same people who were in Minsk – had a meeting with the head of the “Luhansk People's Republic” Igor Plotnitsky.

They brought icons as a gift to Lugansk, so that “to help Novorossiya , Luhansk People's Republic and Donetsk People's Republic to stand up on feet through the Christian will and these sacred things.”

Also in the Luhansk Philharmonic Hall, Natalia Mezentseva awarded Fund “medals” “in recognition of the services” to “those heroes who have graced the land of Luhansk with their acts of heroism”.

Full conversation between Plotnitsky and Mezentseva is available in the video.

Besides, the Fund publishes children's ABC books “DPR” (Donetsk People's Republic), and it seems that there is no place where Mezentseva hasn’t yet got in the public eye – she has even inspected the production of pipes in the Donbass and has announced the opening of trading houses in the DPR to Russian media.

Nasha Niva phoned to the Minsk Suvorov Military School and asked to clarify the situation, but the ideologist of the School, Colonel Dzmitry Varabei, hung up the phone with the advice to contact the church for the comments.

The head of the main ideological department of the Ministry of Defense Uladzimir Makarau repeated three times that the event was held “as part of the performance of the cooperation agreement between the Orthodox Church and the Armed Forces and in the accordance with the law “On freedom of conscience.”

When asked where the children of other faiths were during the Orthodox prayer service, Makarau gave no answer, saying that there were no religious conflicts in the army.