DISINFO: The Orthodox Church of Ukraine is a Russophobic US project
SUMMARY
The “OCU” [The Orthodox Church of Ukraine] project initiated by the US is aimed not so much at a religious split in Ukraine, as at the artificial creation of a Ukrainian political nation that hates Russia.
RESPONSE
Recurring pro-Kremlin disinformation narratives about Western interference in the affairs of the Orthodox Church and that the West is anti-Russian and Russophobic. These claims also attempt to de-legitimise the autocephaly of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.
The Orthodox Church of Ukraine is an independent, autocephalous church. The Tomos of autocephaly was granted by the Constantinople Patriarchy in January 2019, when all members of the Synod of the Ecumenical Patriarchate signed off on it. The signing of the Tomos happened after months of careful preparations and considerations by the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew and the Holy Synod.
“Russophobia” is a manipulative defensive line, often used by Russian disinformation actors to reduce any criticism of the Russian state to an irrational intolerance towards the Russian people. Outlets such as RT, Sputnik and Russian national state television use the term to explain away almost any foreign criticism of the Kremlin's policies.
Read similar disinformation cases claiming that Russophobia is the main export of Lithuania and NATO is closing in on Russia's border, that the US and EU countries are Russophobic, that anti-Russian position helped NATO countries freeze a drift in different directions, that Russian threat is an invention, Poland wages an information war against Russia, Poland, the Baltic States and Ukraine are infected by Russophobia, and Anti-Russian hysteria gave birth to demons such as fascism and Banderism.
See also EUvsDisinfo's analysis "The “Russophobia” Myth: Appealing to the Lowest Feelings" here.