Selling “prayers against mobilization” and cursing critics of Zelensky’s Victory Plan

Pro-Kremlin media sockets and the pro-war Telegram channels recently disseminated videos and photos allegedly taken at the Holy Trinity Church of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, located in the Troyskhin district of Kiev. In the recording, an unidentified person holds a piece of paper with an alleged “prayer against mobilization.” The video shows that such a “prayer” costs UAH 10.

This is false. Image editors were used to create the fake card. The presented decoration is in a Russian warehouse Online resources. It’s called “Russian decoration“. Propagandists replaced the domes, the symbol of the Russian Orthodox Church, with the cross of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, then printed it on a piece of paper and passed it off as a real prayer, which is also allegedly sold for money in Ukraine.

Moreover, in the text of the prayer, all letters “з” are written with the Latin letter “Z, one of the symbols of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The Latin “Z” is not even used in the Old Slavic spelling, which is used in the prayers of the Russian Orthodox Church.

It is not possible to determine the exact place where the propagandists’ video was shot, because there is nothing more in the frame than a hand holding a card with a “prayer” and a church altar with candles, which are typical elements found in Orthodoxy. churches around the world.

It is worth noting that Russian propagandists used the Instagram account as the main source of spreading this falsehood, which was used to replicate another false narrative.

According to propagandists, this false narrative was spread by the church’s avatar account, but its name was intentionally blurred.

We have learned that this avatar is now used by an account with the nickname natalyjust78, which has spread fake that a Las Vegas nightclub celebrated the birthday of Russian dictator Vladimir Putin.

This is not the only church fakery recently spread by propagandists. Recently pro-war Telegram channels reported that a priest of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church allegedly cursed people who mocked the “Victory Plan” presented by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. To confirm, the authors of the entry shared a screenshot allegedly taken from the Facebook account of priest Roman Hryszczuk.

This is false. There is no such entry on the priest’s Facebook page. As it turned out, the propagandists used graphic editors to edit the screenshot, using another entry by Roman Hryshchek, published on October 9, before President Zelensky presented the “Victory Plan. In original entry, on the contrary, the priest in the recording gives advice to parishioners on how to behave in the event of a curse. The video shows the same room as in the fake post. Additionally, in the background of the icon you can see a flash of light identical to the one shown in the propagandists’ “screenshot”.

Ukrinform journalists have repeatedly refuted Russian false narratives against the Orthodox Church of Ukraine. Russian propaganda spread false information about the supposedly Orthodox Church of Ukraine forcing people atone for the use of the Russian language and for alleged combustion ancient temple in Ukraine, allegedly belonging to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate.

Russian propagandists spread false information on religious topics in order to discredit the Orthodox Church of Ukraine and create an artificial division in Ukrainian society.

As Ukrinform previously reported, Russian propaganda falsified the above-mentioned information Charlie Hebdo cover regarding the Ukrainian Peace Formula.

Andriy Olenin, Dmytro Badrak