As preparations were being made in the capital of the Russian Federation for a mass protest in support of fair elections and against repression, which ended, as usual, with arrests and beatings, the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) decided to send a clear message about its position on all this.
And this message, of course, was not a Christian call for peace and harmony, but a concrete support for one side. Not civil society, of course.
Vladimir Legoyda, the head of the ROC’s Department for Church-Society Relations and Media, decided on this particular day to congratulate and encourage those who not only defend the regime, but are willing to use force for it, wielding a stick like the Kremlin’s security forces and using words like Kremlin propagandist Vladimir Solovyov.
«Keep up the good work, brothers,» he urged them, and with the church’s blessing, they got right to work. The result: 256 arrests in Moscow, 79 arrests in St. Petersburg, and 6 people beaten, including a disabled person and a young woman.
The last case literally shocked the entire society (video link). According to the woman, she was punched in the liver not because she tried to resist — as the video clearly shows, she was in a helpless state at that moment — but simply because the National Guard officer dropped his baton.
As for the disabled person, who clearly cannot walk, she was dragged down the street while her arms were twisted (video link).
Interestingly, despite the fact that all these facts have been widely publicized, the ROC public relations representative who blessed the security forces’ «work» did not raise any objections, even to these two egregious cases, which he could not have been unaware of.
Does this mean that the ROC directly blesses the guardians of the regime, including the beating of the handicapped and women?