By Kostas Onisenko
Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk described the coronavirus as a biological weapon against Russia during his weekly show “Church and World” on the channel Россия 24 last Saturday.
The hierarch, head of the Synodal Department of the Moscow Patriarchate’s Department for External Church Relations, has been waging a “fight” for vaccinations in his country for several weeks now, referring to the need that all Russians should be vaccinated.
He even attacks the anti-vaccinators while implying that this movement is led by some forces that aim to hit Russia.
On the recent show, he said the campaign against vaccination is “very well funded” and that “those who run this campaign have an interest in us in Russia so that it (editor’s note: the pandemic) will last as long as possible and to claim as many lives as possible.”
He added that “some of our citizens contribute to these hostile forces, without knowing it or wanting it.”
Concluding, the Metropolitan claimed that “a war has been waged against our country for a long time and the virus is a biological weapon. Our goal is to survive and win this war.”
However, the hierarch of the Moscow Patriarchate forgot to mention that anti-vaccination movements exist in all countries, not only in Russia.
So even if we could assume that there are some “dark centers” that want to perpetuate the pandemic, there is absolutely no evidence that these “centers” are specifically targeting Russia.
At the same time, while the Metropolitan Hilarion “fights” for vaccination and against the pandemic, he himself avoided commenting in any way on the fact that the Russian Orthodox Church from the beginning of the pandemic until today ignores the protection and quarantine measures.
In fact, sometimes it violates Russian law and is indifferent to the specific orders of the Russian state.
In the most recent example, the cross procession was carried out by the Russian Orthodox Church in the city of Ekaterinburg in the previous days, despite the fact that the local authorities had banned the event, which was attended by thousands of people without taking any protective measures (face masks, social distancing).