Bombed churches – cui bono?

Whilst my internet connection was down last week, I missed being able to research the Easter missile strike on a village church in Komyshuvakha, Zaporizhzhia oblast, in Ukraine. The Presearch search engine (allegedly private, but evidently programmed for MSM) only gives me pages upon pages about the dastardly Russian outrage, all of course taken uncritically from official Ukrainian sources. That’s the consensus, then, but “the majority is always wrong,” and it just takes a little thought to prove that to be so in this case.

If, as all the news reports say, “Putin done it” whilst “the dictator” was “hypocritically” celebrating his own Easter in church in Moscow, then let’s ask why. To waste expensive missiles on a village church served no strategic or tactical aims. Russia is fighting hard to gain control of Bakhmut, whilst moving forward on the rest of their front. Distant strikes have clearly been intended to degrade Ukraine’s power and transport infrastructure, or to take out control centres and air defences.

If Western sources are to be believed (and who would doubt them for a second?) Russia is almost out of munitions, so lobbing bombs at village churches can only have one purpose – that of purposeless violence born of desperation and malice. Which is odd when, without any doubt, they’re winning in Bakhmut.

Nothing was achieved by the attack (and thankfully the church was empty of worshippers, which may seem odd at Easter in itself – could it be that they were forbidden to meet?). But although the Mail’s articles and comment columns are full of remarks about Russia’s pretended Christianity masking ape-like savagery, the fact is that 70-80% of Russians are Orthodox, and could only see the deliberate destruction of an Orthodox church as deeply sacriligeous. Such an act would weaken morale at home, undermine support for Putin, and of course strengthen outrage and resistance in Ukraine. A pretty poor return for an act of petty spite.

This is especially relevant since Zaporizhzhia was part of Russia until 1922, supported the pro-Russian President Yanokovych with more than a 20% lead in 2010, and is largely already occupied by Russia.

On the other hand, consider the possibility (as claimed by locals on the ground) that the strike came from Ukraine itself. Ukraine is also an Orthodox country, but one that has been deliberately split in recent years by the establishment of a schism from the Russian Orthodox order as part of the right-wing nationalism dominant since the 2014 Maidan coup, greatly encouraged by the US. This very year, Zelensky and his merry men have denounced those congregations still loyal to the Moscow Patriarchate as traitors. He has evicted monks from ancient monasteries, burned down recalcitrant churches, and even put an ankle tag on the country’s most senior churchman. Last December, churches loyal to the old denomination were banned, though sadly few Christian organisations over here seem to have noticed.

I saw very little in the news reports to indicate the affiliation of that church in Komyshuvakha: for the informed Westerner, it’s sufficient to know that the bestial Russians bombed a church. But the Wikipedia page Файл:Saint Michael church in Komyshuvakha after Russian shelling helpfully tells us (or it did when I searched an hour ago – not now), in English, that it is, or rather was, “Saint Michael church of Moscow Patriarchate (1906).” So not only did the Russians bomb a church – they bombed one that, apparently, was holding out against Ukrainian state pressure, in order to remain loyal to the historical Moscow Patriarchate.

This biting-off-nose-to-spite-face phenomenon has been a pattern throughout this conflict, if the Western media is to be believed (and who would doubt them for a second?). At Bucha, the Ukrainian special forces sent in to clean up pro-Russian forces tragically encountered mutilated bodies left in the streets by retreating Russians – most with White Russian arm-bands.

The mysterious shelling of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station, too muddly for the UN weapons inspectors to solve despite the Ukrainian missile-cases angled from the west, was widely blamed on Russia even though it holds the installation, and was keeping power going to Ukraine until the risk of nuclear accident became too much and it was shut down.

Then, of course, we have the mining of the Nordstream pipelines, for which nobody now really believes Russia could be to blame. But the cagey silence of Western nations about who might have done it leaves the average “informed reader of MSM” with his initial suspicions, fuelled by the early anti-Russian accusations, intact. Once again, their motives for trashing their own massive investment in a lucrative project don’t seem to interest such people. Incidentally, did you know that a journalist investigating the ridiculous “yacht” theory of the blasts was told by German and Swedish sources that the unexploded charge on Nordstream 2 could not be studied because the Americans got there first and removed it?

And so it goes on – I am expected to believe the unbelievable by sheer media pressure – now a familiar phenomenon on all fronts from climate change to COVID. If Ukraine did it, but has the apparatus of the Western goverments and press to transfer the blame to Moscow, they get both to add fuel to the fire of “Russian barbarity,” to persuade American and British Evangelicals that Russia is still a persecuting Communist power, and to demonstrate to the Russian Orthodox in their own country that they had better comply with the Kiev schismatics, because nobody in the world will support them in their persecution.

I suppose you could put it all down to the justified propaganda of war. Except that there is yet another contradiction there – we are blinded by the fog of war, and our special forces are killing and dying in it, though we are supposedly not at war… And the bloody Ukrainian security services have visited this blog 640 times in the last month, outstripping my British readers. Nothing to see here folks – move on to the BBC for the facts.